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JOHN STUART MILL 



HIS LIFE AND WORKS. 



TWELVE SKETCHES BY 

Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harriso7i, 



AND OTHER DISTINGUISHED AUTHORS. 





BOSTON : 
JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, 

(Late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co.) 

1873- 
/3 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, 

By JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO., 

At the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 



. Boston : 

Stereotyped and Printed by Rand, A very, &• Co. 



CONTENTS, 



JOHN STUART MILL: page. 

I. A Sketch of his Life. H. R. Fox Bourne . . 5 

II, His Career in the India House. W. T. Thornton 30 

III. His Moral Character. Herbert Spencer ... 38 

IV. His Botanical Studies. Henry Trimen. ... 43 
V. His Place as a Critic. W. Minto 49 

VI. His Work in Philosophy. J. H. Levy .... 55 

VII. His Studies in Morals and Jurisprudence. 

W. A. Hunter 62 

VIII. His Work in Political Economy. J. E. Cairnes 65 

IX. His Influence at the Universities. Henry 

Fawcett 74 

X. His Influence as a Practical Politician. Mil- 

licent Garrett Fawcett 81 

XI. His Relation to Positivism. Frederic Harrison 88 

XIL His Position as a Philosopher. W. A. Hunter 91 

(3) 



i?3 



John Stuart Mill. 



A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE. 

John Stuart Mill was born on the 20th of May, 
1806. "I am glad," wrote George Grote to him in 
1865, with reference to a forthcoming article on his 
" Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy," 
" to get an opportunity of saying what I think about 
your ' System of Logic ' and ' Essay on Liberty ; ' but I 
am still more glad to get (or perhaps to make) an 
opportunity of saying something about your father. 
It has always rankled in my thoughts that so grand 
and powerful a mind as his left behind it such insuffi- 
cient traces in the estimation of successors." That 
regret was natural. The grand and powerful mind of 
James Mill left very notable traces, however, in the 
philosophical literature of his country, and in the 
training of the son who was to carry on his work, and 
to be the most influential teacher in a new school of 
thought and action, by which society is likely to be 
revolutionized far more than it has been by any other 
1* 5 



6 JOHN STUART MILL. 

agency since the period of Erasmus and Martin 
Luther. James Mill was something more than the 
disciple of Bentham and Ricardo. He was a profound 
and original philosopher, whose depth and breadth of 
study were all the more remarkable because his 
thoughts were developed and his knowledge was 
acquired mainly by his own exertions. He had been 
helped out of the humble life into which he had been 
born by Sir John Stuart, who assisted him to attend 
the lectures of Dugald Stewart and others at Edin- 
burgh with a view to his becoming a minister in the 
Church of Scotland. Soon finding that calling dis- 
tasteful to him, he had, in or near the year 1800, settled 
in London as a journalist, resolved by ephemeral work 
to earn enough money to maintain him and his family 
in humble ways while he spent his best energies in 
the more serious pursuits to which he was devoted. 
His talents soon made him friends ; and the greatest 
of these was Jeremy Bentham. 

As erroneous opinions have been current as to the 
relations between Bentham and James Mill, and have 
lately been repeated in more than one newspaper, it 
may be well here to call attention to the contradiction 
of them that was published by the son of the latter in 
"The Edinburgh Review " for 1844. "Mr. Mill and 
his family," we there read, " lived with Mr. Bentham 
for half of four years at Ford Abbey," — that is, be- 
tween 1814 and 1817, — "and they passed small por- 
tions of previous summers with him at Barrow Green. 
His last visit to Barrow Green was of not more than a 
month's duration ; and the previous ones all together 
did not extend to more than six months, or seven at 



A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE. 7 

most. The pecuniary benefit which Mr. Mill derived 
from his intimacy with Bentham consisted in this, — 
that he and his family lived with him as his guests, 
while he was in the country, periods amounting in all 
to about two years and a half. I have no reason to 
think that his hospitality was either given or accepted 
as pecuniary assistance ; and I will add that the obliga- 
tion was not exclusively on one side. Bentham was 
not then, as he was afterwards, surrounded by persons 
who courted his society, and were ever ready to volun- 
teer their services ; and, to a man of his secluded 
habits, it was no little advantage to have near him such 
a man as Mr. Mill, to whose advice and aid he habitu- 
ally had recourse in all business transactions with the 
outward world of a troublesome or irksome nature. 
Such as the connection was, it was not of Mr. Mill's 
seeking." On the same unquestionable authority we 
learn, that " Mr. Mill never in his life was in debt ; and 
his income, whatever it might be, always covered his 
expenses." It is clear, that, from near the commence- 
ment of the present century, James Mill and Bentham 
lived for many years on terms of great intimacy, in 
which the poorer man was thoroughly independent, 
although it suited the other to make a fair return for 
the services rendered to him. A very characteristic 
letter is extant, dated 1814, in which James Mill pro- 
poses that the relations between him and his " dear 
friend and master " shall be to some extent altered, but 
only in order that their common objects may be the 
more fully served. " In reflecting," he says, " upon 
the duty which we owe to our principles, — to that sys- 
tem of important truths of which you have the immor- 



8 JOHN STUART MILL. 

tal honor to be the author, but of which I am a most 
faithful and fervent disciple, and hitherto, I have 
fancied, my master's favorite disciple, — I have con- 
sidered that there was nobody at all so likely to be 
your real successor as myself. Of talents it would be 
easy to find many superior. But, in the first place, I 
hardly know of anybody who has so completely taken 
up the principles, and is so thoroughly of the same 
way of thinking with yourself. In the next place, 
there are very few who have so much of the neces- 
sary previous discipline ; my antecedent years having 
been wholly occupied in acquiring it. And, in the last 
place, I am pretty sure you cannot think of any other 
person whose whole life will be devoted to the propa- 
gation of the system." "There was during the last 
few years of Bentham's life," said James Mill's son, 
" less frequency and cordiality of intercourse than in 
former years, chiefly because Bentham had acquired 
newer, and to him more agreeable intimacies ; but Mr. 
Mill's feeling never altered towards him, nor did he 
ever fail, publicly or privately, in giving due honor to 
Bentham's name and acknowledgment of the intellec- 
tual debt he owed to him." 

Those extracts are made, not only in justice to the 
memory of James Mill, but as a help towards under- 
standing the influences by which his son was sur- 
rounded from his earliest years. James Mill was 
living in a house at Pentonville when this son was 
born ; and partly because of the peculiar abilities that 
the boy displayed from the first, partly because he 
could not afford to procure for him elsewhere such 
teaching as he was able himself to give him, he took 



A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE. 9 

his education entirely into his own hands. With what 
interest — even jealous interest, it would seem — 
Bentham watched that education, appears from a 
pleasant little letter addressed to him by the elder 
Mill in 1812. "I am not going to die," he wrote, 
" notwithstanding your zeal to come in for a legacy. 
However, if I were to die any time before this poor 
boy is a man, one of the things that would pinch me 
most sorely would be the being obliged to leave his 
mind unmade to the degree of excellence of which I 
hope to make it. But another thing is, that the only 
prospect which would lessen that pain would be the 
leaving him in your hands. I therefore take your offer 
quite seriously, and stipulate merely that it shall be 
made as soon as possible ; and then we may perhaps 
leave him a successor worthy of both of us." It was 
a bold hope, but one destined to be fully realized. At 
the time of its utterance, the " poor boy " was barely 
more than six years old. The intellectual powers of 
which he gave such early proof were carefully, but 
apparently not excessively, cultivated. Mrs. Grote, in 
her lately-published " Personal Life of George Grote," 
has described him as he appeared in 18 17, the year 
in which her husband made the acquaintance of his 
father : "John Stuart Mill, then a boy of about twelve 
years old," — he was really only eleven, — "was study- 
ing, with his father as sole preceptor, under the pater- 
nal roof. Unquestionably forward for his years, and 
already possessed of a competent knowledge of Greek 
and Latin, as well as of some subordinate though solid 
attainments, John was, as a boy, somewhat repressed 
by the elder Mill, and seldom took any share in the 



IO JOHN STUART MILL. 

conversation carried on by the society frequenting the 
house." It is perhaps not strange that a boy of 
eleven, at any rate a boy who was to become so mod- 
est a man, should not take much part in general con- 
versation • and Mr. Mill himself never, in referring to 
his father, led his hearers to suppose that he had, as a 
child, been in any way unduly repressed by him. The 
tender affection with which he always cherished his 
father's memory in no way sanctions the belief that he 
was at any time subjected to unreasonable discipline. 
By him his father was only revered as the best and 
kindest of teachers. 

There was a break in the home-teaching in 1820. 
James Mill, after bearing bravely with his early diffi- 
culties, had acquired so much renown by his famous 
" History of India," that, in spite of its adverse criti- 
cisms of the East-India Company, the directors of the 
Company in 1817 honorably bestowed upon him a post 
in the India House, where he steadily and rapidly rose 
to a position which enabled him to pass the later years 
of his life in more comfort than had hitherto been 
within his reach. The new employment, however, 
interfered with his other occupation as instructor to 
his boy ; and for this reason, as well probably as for 
others tending to his advancement, the lad was, in the 
summer of 1820, sent to France for a year and a half. 
For several months he lived in Paris, in the house of 
Jean Baptiste Say, the political economist. The rest 
of his time was passed in the company of Sir Samuel 
Bentham, Jeremy Bentham's brother. Early in 1822, 
before he was eighteen, he returned to London, soon 
to enter the India Office as a clerk in the department 



A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE. II 

of which his father was chief. In that office he re- 
mained for five and thirty years, acquitting himself 
with great ability, and gradually rising to the most 
responsible position that could be there held by a 
subordinate. 

But, though he was thus early started in life as a city- 
clerk, his self-training and his education by his father 
were by no means abandoned. The ancient and mod- 
ern languages, as well as the various branches of 
philosophy and philosophical thought in which he was 
afterwards to attain such eminence, were studied by 
him in the early mornings, under the guidance of his 
father, before going down to pass his days in the India 
Office. During the summer evenings, and on such 
holidays as he could get, he began those pedestrian 
exploits for which he afterwards became famous, and 
in which his main pleasure appears to have consisted 
in collecting plants and flowers in aid of the botanical 
studies that were his favorite pastime, and something 
more than a pastime, all through his life. His first 
printed writings are said to have been on botany, in 
the shape of some articles contributed to a scientific 
journal while he was still in his teens ; and it is 
probable, that, could they now be detected, we should 
find in other periodicals traces of his work, at nearly 
if not quite as early a period, in other lines of study. 
That he worked early and with wonderful ability in at 
least one very deep line, appears from the fact, that, 
while he was still only a lad, Jeremy Bentham intrusted 
to him the preparation for the press, and the supple- 
mentary annotation, of his " Rationale of Judicial 
Evidence." That work, for which he was highly com- 



12 JOHN STUART MILL. 

mended by its author, published in 1827, contains the 
first publicly-acknowledged literary work of John 
Stuart Mill. 

While he was producing that result of laborious 
study in a special and intricate subject, his education 
in all sorts of other ways was continued. In evidence 
of the versatility of his pursuits, the veteran author of 
a short and ungenerous memoir that was published in 
" The Times " of May the 10th contributes one inter- 
esting note. " It is within our personal knowledge," 
he says, " that he was an extraordinary youth when, in 
1824, he took the lead at -the London Debating Club 
in one of the most remarkable collections of ' spirits 
of the age ' that ever congregated for intellectual 
gladiatorship, he being by two or three years the jun- 
ior of the clique. The rivalry was rather in knowledge 
and reasoning than in eloquence ; mere declamation 
was discouraged ; and subjects of paramount impor- 
tance were conscientiously thought out." In evidence 
of his more general studies, we may here repeat a few 
sentences from an account, by an intimate friend of 
both these great men, of the life of Mr. Grote, which 
was published in our columns two years ago. " About 
this time a small society was formed for readings in 
philosophical subjects. The meetings took place at 
Mr. Grote's house in Threadneedle Street, on certain 
days from half-past eight till ten in the morning, at 
which hour the members (all in official employment) 
had to repair to' their respective avocations. The 
members were Grote, John Mill, Roebuck, William 
Ellice, William Henry Prescott, two brothers Whit- 
more, and George John Qraham. The mentor of 



A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE. 1 3 

their studies was the elder Mr. Mill. The meetings 
were continued for two or three years. The readings 
embraced a small manual of logic, by Du Trieu, recom- 
mended by Mr. Mill, and reprinted . for the purpose, 
Whately's Logic, Hobbes's Logic, and Hartley on Man, 
in Priestley's edition. The manner of proceeding was 
thorough. Each paragraph, on being read, was com- 
mented on by every one in turn, discussed and redis- 
cussed, to the point of total exhaustion. In 1828 the 
meetings ceased j but they were resumed in 1830, upon 
Mill's ' Analysis of the Mind,' which was gone over 
in the same manner." These philosophical studies 
were not only of extreme advantage in strengthening 
and developing the merits of Mr. Mill and his friends, 
nearly all of whom were considerably older than he 
was : they also served to unite the friends in close and 
lasting intimacy of the most refined and elevating sort. 
Mr. Grote, his senior by twelve years, was perhaps the 
most intimate, as he was certainly the ablest, of all the 
friends whom Mr. Mill thus acquired. 

Many of these friends were contributors to the 
original " Westminster Review," which was started by 
Bentham in 1824. Bentham himself and the elder 
Mill were its chief writers at first ; and in 1828, if not 
sooner, the younger Mill joined the number. In 
that year he reviewed Whately's Logic ; and it is 
probable that in the ensuing year he contributed 
numerous other articles. His first literary exploit, 
however, which he cared to reproduce in his " Disser- 
tations and Discussions " was an article that appeared 
in " The Jurist," in 1833, entitled " Corporation and 
Church Property." That essay, in some respects, 



14 JOHN STUART MILL. 

curiously anticipated the Irish Church legislation of 
nearly forty years later. In the same year he pub- 
lished, in " The Monthly Repository," a remarkably 
able and quite a different production, — " Poetry and 
it's Varieties ;" showing that in the department of belles- 
lettres he could write with nearly as much vigor and 
originality as in the philosophical and political depart- 
ments of thought to which, ostensibly, he was espe- 
cially devoted. Shortly after that he embarked in a 
bolder literary venture. Differences having arisen 
concerning "The Westminster Review," a new quarter- 
ly journal — " The London Review " — was begun by 
Sir William Molesworth, with Mr. Mill for editor, in 
1835. "The London" was next year amalgamated 
with " The Westminster ; " and then the nominal if not 
the actual editorship passed into the hands of Mr. 
John Robertson. Mr. Mill continued, however, to be 
one of its most constant and able contributors until 
the Review passed into other hands in 1840. He 
aided much to make and maintain its reputation as the 
leading organ of bold thought on religious and social 
as well as political matters. Besides such remarkable 
essays as those on Civilization, on Armand Carrel, 
on Alfred de Vigny, on Bentham, and on Coleridge, 
which, with others, have been republished in his 
collection of minor writings, he contributed many of 
great importance. One on Mr. Tennyson, which was 
published in 1835, is especially noteworthy. Others 
referred more especially to the politics of the day. 
From one, which appeared in 1837, reviewing Albany 
Fonblanque's " England under Seven Administra- 
tions," and speaking generally in high terms of the 



A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE. 1 5 

politics of " The Examiner," we may extract a few 
sentences which define very clearly the political 
ground taken by Mr. Mill, Mr. Fonblanque, and those 
who had then come to be called Philosophical Radi- 
cals. " There are divers schools of Radicals," said 
Mr. Mill. "There are the historical Radicals, who 
demand popular institutions as the inheritance of 
Englishmen, transmitted to us from the Saxons or the 
barons of Runnymede. There are the metaphysical 
Radicals, who hold the principles of democracy, not 
as means to good government, but as corollaries from 
some unreal abstraction, — from ' natural liberty ' or 
* natural rights.' There are the radicals of occasion 
and circumstance, who are radicals because they dis- 
approve the measures of the government for the time 
being. There are, lastly, the Radicals of position, 
who are Radicals, as somebody said, because they are 
not lords.. Those whom, in contradistinction to all 
these, we call Philosophical Radicals, are those who in 
politics observe the common manner of philosophers ; 
that is, who, when they are discussing means, begin 
by considering the end, and, when they desire to pro- 
duce effects, think of causes. These persons became 
Radicals because they saw immense practical evils 
existing in the government and social condition of 
this country, and because the same examination which 
showed them the evils showed also that the cause of 
those evils was the aristocratic principle in our gov- 
ernment, — the subjection of the many to the control 
of a comparatively few, who had an interest, or fancied 
they had an interest, in perpetuating those evils. 
These inquirers looked still farther, and saw, that, in 



1 6 JOHN STUART MILL. 

the present imperfect condition of human nature, 
nothing better than this self-preference was to be ex- 
pected from a dominant few ; that the interests of the 
many were sure to be in their eyes a secondary con- 
sideration to their own ease or emolument. Perceiv- 
ing, therefore, that we are ill-governed, and perceiving 
that, so long as the aristocratic principle continued 
predominant in our government, we could not expect 
to be otherwise, these persons became Radicals ; and 
the motto of their Radicalism was, Enmity to the aris- 
tocratical principle." 

The period of Mr. Mill's most intimate connection 
with " The London and Westminster Review " forms a 
brilliant episode in the history of journalism ; and his 
relations, then and afterwards, with other men of 
letters and political writers, — some of them as famous 
as Mr. Carlyle and Coleridge, Charles Buller and Sir 
Henry Taylor, Sir William Molesworth, Sir John Bow- 
ring, and Mr. Roebuck, — yield tempting materials for 
even the most superficial biography ; but we must pass 
them by for the present. And here we shall content 
ourselves with enumerating, in the order of their publi- 
cation, those lengthier writings with which he chiefly 
occupied his leisure during the next quarter of a cen- 
tury ; though that work was frequently diversified by 
important contributions to "The Edinburgh" and 
" The Westminster Review," " Fraser's Magazine," 
and other periodicals. His first great work was "A 
System of Logic," the result of many years' previous 
study, which appeared in 1843. That completed, he 
seems immediately to have paid chief attention to 
politico-economical questions. In 1844 appeared 



A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE. 1 7 

" Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of Political 
Economy," which were followed, in 1848, by the "Prin- 
ciples of Political Economy." After that there was a 
pause of ten years ; though the works that were issued 
during the next six years show that he had not been 
idle during the interval. In 1857 were published two 
volumes of the " Dissertations and Discussions," con- 
sisting solely of printed articles, the famous essay " On 
Liberty," and the "Thoughts on Parliamentary Re- 
form." " Considerations on Representative Govern- 
ment " appeared in 1861 ; "Utilitarianism," in 1863; 
" Auguste Comte and Positivism " and the " Examina- 
tion of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy," in 1865. 
After that, besides the very welcome "Inaugural 
Address " at St. Andrew's in 1867, his only work of 
importance was "The Subjection of Women," -pub- 
lished in 1869. A fitting conclusion to his more 
serious literary labors appeared also in 1869 in his 
annotated edition of his father's "Analysis of the 
Phenomena of the Human Mind." 

When we remember how much and what varied 
knowledge is in those learned books, it is almost diffi- 
cult to believe, that, during most of the years in which 
he was preparing them, Mr. Mill was also a hard 
worker in the India House, passing rapidly, and as the 
reward only of his assiduity and talent, from the 
drudgery of a junior clerk to a position involving all 
the responsibility, if not quite all the dignity, of a 
secretary of state. One of his most intimate friends, 
and the one who knew far more of him in this respect 
than any other, has in another column penned some 
reminiscences of his official life ; but if all the state 
2* 



1 8 JOHN STUART MILL. 

papers that he wrote, and all the correspondence that 
he carried on with Indian officials and the native 
potentates of the East, could be explored, more than 
one volume would have to be written in supplement to 
his father's great " History of British India." 

Having retired from the India House in 1858, Mr. 
Mill went to spend the winter in Avignon, in the hope 
of improving the broken health of the wife to whom 
he was devotedly attached. He had not been married 
many years ; but Mrs. Mill, who was the widow of Mr. 
John Taylor, a London merchant, had been his friend 
since 1835, or even earlier. During more than twenty 
years he had been aided by her talents, and encouraged 
by her sympathy, in all the work he had undertaken ; 
and to her rare merits he afterwards paid more than 
one tribute in terms that have no equal for the intensity 
of their language, and the depth of affection contained 
in them. Mrs. Mill's weak state of health seems to 
have hardly repressed her powers of intellect. By her 
was written the celebrated essay on " The Enfranchise- 
ment of Women " contributed to " The Westminster 
Review," and afterwards reprinted in the " Disserta- 
tions and Discussions," with a preface avowing, that by 
her Mr. Mill had been greatly assisted in all that he 
had written for some time previous. But the assistance 
was to end now. Mrs. Mill died at Avignon on the 
3d of November, 1858 ; and over her grave was placed 
one of the most pathetic and eloquent epitaphs that 
have been ever penned, j " Her great and loving heart, 
her noble soul, her clear, powerful, original, and com- 
prehensive intellect," kwaS-tlie.rejwritten, " made her 
the guide and support, the instructor in wisdom, and 



A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE. 1 9 

the example in goodness, as she was the sole earthly 
delight, of those who had the happiness to belong to 
her. As earnest for all public good as she was gener- 
ous and devoted to all who surrounded her, her 
influence has been felt in many of the greatest im- 
provements of the age, and will be in those still to 
come. Were there even a few hearts and intellects 
like hers, this earth would already become the hoped- 
for heaven.") Henceforth, during the fourteen years 
and a half fhat were to elapse before he should be laid 
in the same grave, Avignon was the chosen haunt of 
Mr. Mill. 

Passing much of his time in the modest house that 
he had bought, that he might be within sight of his 
wife's tomb, Mr. Mill was also frequently in London, 
whither he came especially to facilitate the new course 
of philosophical and political writing on which he 
entered. He found relief also in excursions, one of 
which was taken nearly every year, in company with 
his step-daughter, Miss Helen Taylor, into various 
parts of Europe. Italy, Switzerland, and many other 
districts, were explored, partly on foot, with a keen eye 
both to the natural features of the localities, especially 
in furtherance of those botanical studies to which Mr. 
Mill now returned with the ardor of his youth, and 
also to their social and political institutions. Perhaps 
the longest and most eventful of these excursions was 
taken in 1862 to Greece. On this occasion it had 
been proposed that his old friend, Mr. Grote, should 
accompany him. " To go through those scenes, and 
especially to go through them in your company," wrote 
Mr. Grote in January, " would be to me pre-eminently 



20 JOHN STUART MILL. 

delightful ; but, alas ! my physical condition altogether 
forbids it. I could not possibly stay away from Lon- 
don, without the greatest discomfort, for so long a 
period as two months. Still less could I endure the 
fatigue of horse and foot exercise which an excursion 
in Greece must inevitably entail." The journey occu- 
pied more than two months ; but in the autumn Mr. 
Mill was at Avignon ; and, returning to London in De- 
cember, he spent Christmas week with Mr. Grote at 
his residence, Barrow Green, — Bentham's old house, 
and the one in which Mr. Mill had played himself when 
he was a child. " He is in good health and spirits," 
wrote Mr. Grote to Sir G. C. Lewis after that visit ; 
" violent against the South in this American struggle ; 
embracing heartily the extreme Abolitionist views, and 
thinking about little else in regard to the general 
question." 

It was only to be expected that Mr. Mill would take 
much interest in the American civil war, and sympa- 
thize strongly with the Abolitionist party. His interest 
in politics had been keen, and his judgment on them 
had been remarkably sound all through life, as his 
early articles in " The Morning Chronicle " and " The 
London and Westminster Review," and g^s later con- 
tributions to various periodicals, helped to testify ; but 
towards the close of his life the interest was perhaps 
keener, as the judgment was certainly more mellowed. ■ 
It was not strange, therefore, that his admirers among 
the working classes, and the advanced radicals of all 
grades, should have urged him, and that, after some 
hesitation, he should have consented, to become a can- 
didate for Westminster at the general election of 1865. 



A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE. 21 

That candidature will be long remembered as a notable 
example of the dignified way in which an honest man, 
and one who was as much a philosopher in practice as 
in theory, can do all that is needful, and avoid all that is 
unworthy, in an excited electioneering contest, and sub- 
mit without injury to the insults of political opponents 
and of political time-servers professing to be of his 
own way of thinking. The result of the, election was 
a far greater honor to the electors who chose him than 
to the representative whom they chose ; though that 
honor was greatly tarnished by Mr. Mill's rejection 
when he offered himself for re-election three years 
later. 

This is hardly the place in which to review at much 
length Mr. Mill's parliamentary career, though it may be 
briefly referred to in evidence of the great and almost- 
unlooked-for ability with which he adapted himself to 
the requirements of a philosophical politician as distinct 
from a political philosopher. His first speech in the 
House of Commons, delivered very soon after its assem- 
bling, was on the occasion of the second reading of the 
Cattle Diseases Bill, on the 14th of February, 1866, 
when he supported Mr. Bright in his opposition to the 
proposals of Mr. Lowe for compensation to their owners 
for the slaughter of such animals as were diseased or 
likely to spread infection. His complaint against the 
bill was succinctly stated in two sentences, which fairly 
illustrated the method and basis of all his arguments upon 
current politics. " It compensates," he said, " a class 
for the results of a calamity which is borne by the whole 
community. In justice, the farmers who have not 
suffered ought to compensate those who have ; but the 



22 JOHN STUART MILL. 

bill does what it ought not to have done, and leaves 
undone what it ought to have done, by not equalizing 
the incidence of the burden upon that class, inasmuch 
as, from the operation of the local principle adopted, 
that portion of an agricultural community who have not 
suffered at all will not have to pay at all, and those who 
have suffered little will have to pay little ; while those 
who have suffered most will have to pay a great deal." 
" An aristocracy," he added, in words that as truly in- 
dicate the way in which he subjected all matters of detail 
to the test of general principles of truth and expediency, — 
" an aristocracy should have the feelings of an aristocracy ; 
and, inasmuch as they enjoy the highest honors and ad- 
vantages, they ought to be willing to bear the first brunt 
of the inconveniences and evils which fall on the country 
generally. This is the ideal character of an aristocracy : 
it is the character with which all privileged classes are 
accustomed to credit themselves ; though I am not aware 
of any aristocracy in history that has fulfilled those re- 
quirements." 

That, and the later speeches that Mr. Mill delivered 
on the Cattle Diseases Bill, at once announced to the 
House of Commons and the public, if they needed any 
such announcement, the temper and spirit in which he 
was resolved to execute his legislative functions. The 
same spirit and temper appeared in the speech on the 
Habeas Corpus Suspension (Ireland) Bill, which he 
delivered on the 17th of February; but his full strength 
as a debater was first manifested during the discussion 
on Mr. Gladstone's Reform Bill of 1866, which was 
brought on for second reading on the 12th of April. 
His famous speech on that occasion, containing the most 



A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE. 23 

powerful arguments offered by any speaker in favor of 
the measure, and his shorter speech during its discussion 
on the 31st of May, need not here be recapitulated. 
They were only admirable developments in practical 
debate of those principles of political science which he 
had already enforced in his published works. The other 
leading topics handled by Mr. Mill during the session 
of 1866 were the expediency of reducing the National 
Debt, which he urged on the occasion of Mr. Neate's 
proposal on the 17th of April ; the Tenure and Improve- 
ment of Land (Ireland) Bill, on which he spoke at length 
and with force on the 17th of May, then practically ini- 
tiating the movement in favor of land-reform, which he 
partly helped to enforce in part with regard to Ireland, 
and for the more complete adoption of which in England 
he labored to the last \ the Jamaica outbreak, and the 
conduct of Governor Eyre, on which he spoke on the 
31st of July; and the electoral disabilities of women, 
which he first brought within the range of practical poli- 
tics by moving, on the 20th of July, for a return of the 
numbers of householders, and others who, " fulfilling 
the conditions of property or rental prescribed by law 
as the qualification for the electoral franchise, are ex- 
cluded from the franchise by reason of their sex." 

In the session of 1867 Mr. Mill took a prominent part 
in the discussions on the Metropolitan Poor Bill ; and he 
spoke on various other topics, — his introduction of the 
Women's Electoral Disabilities Removal Bill being in 
some respects the most notable : but his chief action was 
with reference to Mr. Disraeli's Reform Bill, several 
clauses of which he criticised and helped to alter in com- 
mittee. Though he was as zealous as ever, however, in 



24 JOHN STUART MILL. 

his attendance to public business, he made fewer great 
speeches, being content to set a wise example to other 
and less able men in only speaking when he felt it abso- 
lutely necessary to do so, and in generally performing 
merely the functions of a " silent member." 

In 1868 he was, if not more active, somewhat more 
prominent On March the 6th, on the occasion of Mr. 
Shaw-Lefevre's motion respecting the " Alabama Claims," 
he forcibly expressed his opinions as to the wrong done 
by England to the United States during the civil war, 
and the need of making adequate reparation ; and on the 
12th of the same month he spoke wrth equal boldness 
on Mr. Maguire's motion for a committee to inquire into 
the state of Ireland, repeating anew and enforcing the 
views he had lately put forward in his pamphlet on Ire- 
land, and considerably aiding by anticipation the passage 
of Mr. Gladstone's two great measures of Irish Reform. 
He took an important part in the discussion of the Elec- 
tion Petitions and Corrupt Practices Bill; and among a 
great number of other measures on which he spoke was 
the Married Women's Property Bill of Mr. Shaw-Lefevre. 

Soon after that the House of Commons was dis- 
solved, and Mr. Mill's too brief parliamentary career 
came to an end. The episode, however, had to some 
extent helped to quicken his always keen interest in po- 
litical affairs. This was proved, among other ways, by 
the publication of his pamphlet on " England and Ireland " 
in 1868, and of his treatise " On the Subjection of Wo- 
men" in 1869, as well as by the especial interest which 
he continued to exhibit in two of the most important po- 
litical movements of the day, — all the more important 
because they are yet almost in their infancy, — the one 



A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE. 25 

for the political enfranchisement of women, the other for 
a thorough reform of our system of land tenure. The 
latest proof of his zeal on the second of these important 
points appeared in the address which he delivered at 
Exeter Hall on the 18th of last March, and in two arti- 
cles which he contributed to " The Examiner" at the com- 
mencement of the present year. We may be permitted 
to add that it was his intention to use some of the great- 
er quiet that he expected to enjoy during his stay at 
Avignon in writing frequent articles on political affairs 
for publication in these columns. He died while his 
intellectual powers were as fresh as they had ever been, 
and when his political wisdom was only ripened by ex- 
perience. 

In this paper we purposely limit ourselves to a concise 
narrative of the leading events of Mr. Mill's life, and 
abstain as far as possible from any estimate of either the 
value or the extent of his work in philosophy, in econom- 
ics, in politics, or in any other of the departments of 
thought and study to which, with such depth and breadth 
of mind, he applied himself; but it is impossible for us 
to lay down the pen without some slight reference, how- 
ever inadequate it may be, to the nobility of his charac- 
ter, and the peculiar grace with which he exhibited it in 
all his dealings with his friends and with the whole com- 
munity among whom he lived, and for whom he worked 
with the self-sacrificing zeal of an apostle. If to labor 
fearlessly and ceaselessly for the good of society, and 
with the completest self-abnegation that is consistent 
with healthy individuality, be the true form of religion, 
Mr. Mill exhibited such genuine and profound religion — 
so permeating his whole life, and so engrossing his every 
3 



26 JOHN STUART MILL. 

action — as can hardly be looked for in any other man 
of this generation. Great as were his intellectual quali- 
ties, they were dwarfed by his moral excellences. He 
did not, it is true, aim at any fanciful ideal, or adopt any 
fantastic shibboleths. He was only a utilitarian. He be- 
lieved in no inspiration but that of experience. He 
had no other creed or dogma or gospel than Bentham's 
axiom, — " The greatest happiness of the greatest num- 
ber." But many will think that herein was the chief of all 
his claims to the honor of all men, and the best evidence 
of his worth. At any rate, he set a notable example of the 
way in which a man, making the best use in his power 
of merely his own reason and the accumulated reason of 
those who have gone before him, wisely exercising the 
faculties of which he finds himself possessed, and seeking 
no guidance or support from invisible beacons and intan- 
gible props, may lead a blameless life, and be one of the 
greatest benefactors of his race. No one who had any 
personal knowledge of him could fail to discern the sin- 
gular purity of his character; and to those who knew 
him best that purity was most apparent. He may have 
blundered and stumbled in his pursuit of truth ; but it 
was part of his belief that stumbling and blundering are 
necessary means towards the finding of truth, and that 
honesty of purpose is the only indispensable requisite for 
the nearest approach towards truth of which each indi- 
vidual is capable. That belief rendered him as charita- 
ble towards others as he was modest concerning his own 
attainments. He never boasted ; and he despised no 
one. The only things really hateful to him were arro- 
gance and injustice ; and for these he was_, to say the 
least, as willing and eager to find excuse as could be the 



A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE. 2*J 

most devout utterer of the prayer, " Father, forgive them ; 
for they know not what they do." We had noted many 
instances, coming within our own very limited observa- 
tion, of his remarkable, almost unparalleled magnanim- 
ity and generosity ; but such details would here be almost 
out of place, and they who need such will doubtless 
before long receive much more convincing proof of his 
moral excellence. 

"We shall not here dilate on those minor qualities of 
mind and heart that made Mr. Mill's society so charm- 
ing to all who were fortunate enough to have any share 
in it ; and these, especially in recent years, were many. 
"When the first burden of his grief at the loss of his wife 
had passed, — perhaps partly as a relief from the soli- 
tude, save for one devoted companion, that would other- 
wise have been now forced upon him, — he mixed more 
freely than he had done before in the society of all whose 
company could yield him any satisfaction, or by whom 
his friendship was really valued. His genial and grace- 
ful bearing towards every one who came near him must 
be within the knowledge of very many who will read 
this column ; and they will remember, besides his trans- 
parent nobility of character, and the genial ways in which 
it exhibited itself, certain intellectual qualities for which 
he was remarkable. We here refer, not to his higher 
abilities as a thinker, but to such powers of mind as dis- 
played themselves in conversation. Without any pedan- 
try, — without any sort of intentional notification to those 
with whom he conversed that he was the greatest logi- 
cian, metaphysician, moralist, and economist of the day, 
- — his speech was always, even on the most trivial sub- 
jects, so clear and incisive, that it at once betrayed the 



28 JOHN STUART MILL. 

intellectual vigor of the speaker. Not less remarkable 
also than his uniform refinement of thought, and the 
deftness with which he at all times expressed it, were 
the grasp and keenness of his observation, and the 
strength of memory with which he stored up every thing 
he had ever seen, heard, or read. Nothing escaped his 
notice at the time of its occurrence : nothing was forgot- 
ten by him afterwards. His friends often found, to their 
astonishment, that he knew far more about any passages 
in their lives that he had been made aware of than they 
could themselves remember ; and, whenever that disclos- 
ure was made to them, they must have been rejoiced to 
think, that this memory of his, instead of being, as it 
might well have been, a dangerous garner of severe 
judgments and fairly-grounded prejudices, was a magic 
mirror, in which their follies and foibles were hardly at 
all reflected, and only kindly reminiscences and generous 
sympathies found full expression. 

But he is dead now. Although the great fruits of 
his life — a life in which mind and heart, in which 
senses and emotions, were singularly well balanced — 
are fruits that cannot die, all the tender ties of friend- 
ship, all the strictly personal qualities that so much 
aided his work as a teacher of the world, as the fore- 
most leader of his generation in the search after truth 
and righteousness, are now snapped forever. Only 
four weeks ago he left London for a three-months' stay 
in Avignon. Two weeks ago he was in his customary 
health. On the 5th of May he was attacked by a 
virulent form of erysipelas. On the 8th he died. On 
the 10th he was buried in the grave to which he had, 
through fourteen years, looked forward as a pleasant 



A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE. 29 

resting-place, because during fourteen years there had 
been in it a vacant place beside the remains of the 
wife whom he so fondly loved. 

H. R. Fox Bourne. 



II. 

HIS CAREER IN THE INDIA HOUSE. 

I have undertaken to prepare a sketch of Mr. 
Mill's official career, but find, on inquiry, scarcely any 
thing to add to the few particulars on the subject 
which have already found their way into print Of his 
early official associates, all have, with scarcely an ex- 
ception, already passed away ; and there is no one 
within reach to whom I can apply for assistance in 
verifying or correcting my own impressions. These 
are in substance the following. 

In the few last decades of its existence, the East- 
India Company's establishment, in Leadenhall Street, 
consisted of three divisions, — the secretary's, military 
secretary's, and examiners' offices, — in the last of which 
most of the despatches and letters were composed 
which were afterwards signed by the directors or the 
secretary. Into this division, in the year 182 1, the 
directors, perceiving an infusion of new blood to be 
very urgently required, introduced, as assistant exam- 
iners, four outsiders, — Mr. Strachey (father of the 
present Sir John and Major-Gen. Richard Strachey), 
Thomas Love Peacock (author of " Headlong Hall "), 
3° 






HIS CAREER IN THE INDIA HOUSE. 3 1 

Mr. Harcourt, and Mr. James Mill ; the selection of the 
last-named being all the more creditable to them, 
because, in his " History of British India," he had 
animadverted with much severity on some parts of the 
Company's administration. Two years afterwards, in 
1823, the historian's son, the illustrious subject of 
these brief memoirs, then a lad of seventeen, obtained 
a clerkship under his father. According to the ordi- 
nary course of things in those days, the newly-appointed 
junior would have had nothing to do, except a little 
abstracting, indexing, and searching, or pretending to 
search, into records ; but young Mill was almost imme- 
diately set to indite despatches to the governments of 
the three Indian Presidencies, on what, in India- 
House phraseology, were distinguished as " political " 
subjects, — subjects, that is, for the most part grow- 
ing out of the relations of the said governments with 
" native " states or foreign potentates. This continued 
to be his business almost to the last. In 1828 he was 
promoted to be assistant examiner, and in 1856 he 
succeeded to the post of chief examiner • after which 
his duty consisted rather in supervising what his 
assistants had written than in writing himself : but for 
the three and twenty years preceding he had had im- 
mediate charge of the political department, and had 
written almost every " political " despatch of any im- 
portance that conveyed the instructions of the mer- 
chant princes of Leadenhall Street to their pro-consuls 
in Asia. Of the quality of these documents, it is suffi- 
cient to say, that they were John Mill's ; but, in respect 
to their quantity, it may be worth mentioning that a 
descriptive catalogue of them completely fills a small 



32 JOHN STUART MILL. 

quarto volume of between three hundred and four 
hundred pages, in their author's handwriting, which 
now lies before me ; also that the share of the Court 
of Directors in the correspondence between themselves 
and the Indian governments used to average annually 
about ten huge vellum-bound volumes, foolscap size, 
and five or six inches thick, and that of these volumes 
two a year, for more than twenty years running, were 
exclusively of Mill's composition ; this, too, at times, 
when he was engaged upon such voluntary work in 
addition as his " Logic " and " Political Economy." 

In 1857 broke out the Sepoy war, and in the following 
year the East-India Company was extinguished in all 
but the name, its governmental functions being trans- 
ferred to the Crown. That most illustrious of corpora- 
tions died hard ; and with what affectionate loyalty Mill 
struggled to avert its fate is evidenced by the famous 
Petition to Parliament which he drew up for his old 
masters, and which opens with the following effective 
antithesis : " Your petitioners, at their own expense, and 
by the agency of their own civil and military servants, 
originally acquired for this country its magnificent em- 
pire in the East. The foundations of this empire were 
laid by your petitioners, at that time neither aided nor 
controlled by Parliament, at the same period at which 
a succession of administrations under the control of Parlia- 
ment were losing, by their incapacity and rashness, an- 
other great empire on the opposite side of the Atlantic." 

I am fortunate enough to be the possessor of the ori- 
ginal MS. of this admirable state paper, which I mention, 
because I once heard its real authorship denied in that 
quarter of all others in which it might have been sup- 






HIS CAREER IN THE INDIA HOUSE. 33 

posed to be least likely to be questioned. On one of 
the last occasions of the gathering together of the Pro- 
prietors of East-India Stock, I could scarcely believe my 
ears, when one of the directors, alluding to the petition, 
spoke of it as having been written by a certain other 
official who was sitting by his side, adding, after a mo- 
ment's pause, " with the assistance, as he understood, of 
Mr. Mill," likewise present. As soon as the Court broke 
up, I burst into Mill's room, boiling over with indigna- 
tion, and exclaiming, " What an infamous shame ! " and 
no doubt adding a good deal more that followed in nat- 
ural sequence on such an exordium. " What's the matter? " 

replied Mill as soon as he could get a word in. "M 

[the director] was quite right. The petition was the 

joint work of and myself." — " How can you be so 

perverse ? " I retorted. " You know that I know you 
wrote every word of it." — " No," rejoined Mill, " you are 
mistaken : one whole line on the second page was put in 

by ." 

In August, 1858, the East-India Company's doom was 
pronounced by Parliament. The East-India House was 
completely re-organized, its very name being changed into 
that of the India Office, and a Secretary of State in 
Council taking the place of the Court of Directors. But 
a change of scarcely secondary importance to many of 
those immediately concerned was Mill's retirement on a 
pension. A few months after he had left us an attempt 
was made to bring him back. At that time only one- 
half of the Council were nominated by the Crown, the 
other half having been elected, and the law prescribing 
that any vacancy among these latter should be filled by 
election on the part of the remaining elected members. 



34 JOHN STUART MILL. 

On the first occasion of the kind that occurred, Mill was 
immediately proposed ; and I had the honor of being 
commissioned to sound him on the subject of the in- 
tended offer, and to endeavor to overcome the objections 
to acceptance which it was feared he might entertain. I 
went accordingly to his house at Blackheath, but had no 
sooner broached the subject than I saw that my mission 
was hopeless. The anguish of his recent bereavement 
was as yet too fresh. He sought eagerly for some slight 
alleviation of despair in hard literary labor ; but to face 
the outside world was for the present impossible. 

Here my scanty record must end, unless I may be 
permitted to supplement its meagreness by one or two 
personal — not to say egotistical — reminiscences. The 
death of Mr. Mill senior, in 1836, had occasioned a va- 
cancy at the bottom of the examiner's office, to which I 
was appointed through the kindness of Sir James Car- 
nac, then chairman of the Company, in whose gift it was. 
Within a few months, however, I was transferred to a 
newly-created branch of the secretary's office ; owing to 
which cause, and perhaps also to a little (or not a little) 
mutual shyness, I for some years came so seldom into 
contact with Mr. Mill, that, though he of course knew 
me by sight, we scarcely ever spoke, and generally passed 
each other without any mark of recognition when we 
happened to meet in or out of doors. Early in 1846, 
however, I sent him a copy of a book I had just brought 
out, on " Over-population." A day or two afterwards he 
came into my room to thank me for it ; and during the 
half-hour's conversation that thereupon ensued, sprang 
up, full grown at its birth, an intimate friendship, of 
which I feel that I am not unduly boasting in declaring 



HIS CAREER IN THE INDIA HOUSE. 35 

it to have been equally sincere and fervent on both sides. 
From that time for the next ten or twelve years, a day 
seldom passed without, if I did not go into his room, his 
coming into mine, often telling me as he entered, that he 
had nothing particular to say; but that, having a few min- 
utes to spare, he thought we might as well have a little 
talk. And what talks we have had on such occasions, 
and on what various subjects ! and not unfrequently, too, 
when the room was Mill's, Grote, the historian, would 
join us, first announcing his advent by a peculiar and 
ever-welcome rat-tat with his walking-stick on the door. 
I must not dwell longer over these recollections ; but 
there are two special obligations of my own to Mill 
which I cannot permit myself to pass over. When, in 
1856, he became examiner, he had made it, as I have 
been since assured by the then chairman of the East- 
India Company, a condition of his acceptance of the 
post, that I, whose name very likely the Chairman had 
never before heard, should be associated with him as one 
of his assistant examiners ; and I was placed, in conse- 
quence, in charge of the Public-Works Department. 
Not long afterwards, having lapsed into a state of nerv- 
ous weakness, which for nearly a year absolutely inca- 
pacitated me for mental labor, I should, but for Mill, 
have been compelled to retire from the service. From 
this, however, he saved me by quietly taking upon him- 
self, and for the space of twelve months discharging, the 
whole of my official duties, in addition to his own. Is 
it wonderful that such a man, supposed by those who did 
not know him to be cold, stern, and dry, should have 
been enthusiastically beloved by those who did ? 

It is little to say, that my own friendship with him was, 



36 JOHN STUART MILL. 

from first to last, never once ruffled by difference or mis- 
understanding of any kind. Differences of opinion we 
had in abundance ; but my open avowal of them was 
always recognized by him as one of the strongest proofs 
of respect, and served to cement instead of weakening 
our attachment. 1 The nearest approach made through- 
out our intercourse to any thing of an unpleasant charac- 
ter was about the time of his retirement from the India 
House. Talking over that one day with two or three of 
my colleagues, I said it would not do to let Mill go 
without receiving some permanently-visible token of our 
regard. The motion was no sooner made than it was 
carried by acclamation. Every member of the examiners' 
office — for we jealously insisted on confining the affair 
to ourselves — came tendering his subscription, scarcely 
waiting to be asked ; in half an hour's time some fifty or 
sixty pounds — I forget the exact sum — was collected, 
which in due course was invested in a superb silver ink- 
stand, designed by our friend, Digby Wyatt, and manufac- 
tured by Messrs. Elkington. Before it was ready, however, 
an unexpected trouble arose. In some way or other, 
Mill had got wind of our proceeding, and, coming to me 
in consequence, began almost to upbraid me as its origi- 
nator. I had never before seen him so angry. He hated 
all such demonstrations, he said, and was quite resolved 
not to be made the subject of them. He was sure they 

1 I may be permitted here, without Mr. Thornton's knowledge, to recall a 
remark made by Mr. Mill only a few weeks ago. We were speaking of Mr. 
Thornton's recently-published "Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Meta- 
physics," when I remarked on Mr. Mill's wide divergence from most of the views 
contained in it. " Yes," he replied, " it is pleasant to find something on which 
to differ from Thornton." Mr. Mill's prompt recognition of the importance of 
Mr. Thornton's refutation of the wage-fund theory is only one out of numberless 
instances of his peculiar magnanimity. — B. 



HIS CAREER IN THE INDIA HOUSE. 37 

were never altogether genuine or spontaneous ; there 
were always several . persons who took part in them 
merely because they did not like to refuse ; and, in short, 
whatever we might do, he would have none of it. In 
vain I represented how eagerly everybody, without ex- 
ception, had come forward ; that we had now gone too 
far to recede ■ that, if he would not take the inkstand, we 
should be utterly at a loss what to do with it ; and that I 
myself should be in a specially embarrassing position. 
Mill was not to be moved. This was a question of prin- 
ciple ; and on principle he could not give way. There 
was nothing left, therefore, but resort to a species of 
force. I arranged with Messrs. Elkington that our little 
testimonial should be taken down to Mr. Mill's house at 
Blackheath by one of their men, who, after leaving it 
with the servant, should hurry away without waiting for 
an answer. This plan succeeded ; but I have always 
suspected, though she never told me so, that its success 
was mainly due to Miss Helen Taylor's good offices. 
But for her, the inkstand would almost certainly have 
been returned, instead of being promoted, as it eventually 
was, to a place of honor in her own and her father's 
drawing-room. 

Mine is scarcely just now the mood in which I should 
have been naturally disposed to relate anecdotes like 
this j but, in the execution of my present task, I have felt 
bound chiefly to consider what would be likely to interest 
the reader. 

W. T. Thornton. 



III. 

HIS MORAL CHARACTER. 

To dilate upon Mr. Mill's achievements, and to insist 
upon the wideness of his influence over the thought of 
his time, and consequently over the actions of his time, 
seems to me scarcely needful. The facts are sufficiently 
obvious, and are recognized by all who know any thing 
about the progress of opinion during the last half-cen- 
tury. My own estimate of him, intellectually considered, 
has been emphatically though briefly given on an occa- 
sion of controversy between us, "by expressing my regret 
at * having to contend against the doctrine of one whose 
agreement I should value more than that of any other 
thinker." 

While, however, it is almost superfluous to assert of 
him that intellectual height so generally admitted, there 
is more occasion for drawing attention to a moral eleva- 
tion that is less recognized, partly because his activities 
in many directions afforded no occasion for exhibiting it, 
and partly because some of its most remarkable mani- 
festations in conduct are known only to those whose 
personal relations with him have called them forth. I 
feel especially prompted to say something on this point, 
38 



HIS MORAL CHARACTER. 39 

because, where better things might have been expected, 
there has been, not only a grudging recognition of intel- 
lectual rank, but a marked blindness to those fine traits 
of character, which, in the valuation of men, must go for 
more than superiority of intelligence. 

It might indeed have been supposed, that even those 
who never enjoyed the pleasure of personal acquaintance 
with Mr. Mill would have been impressed with the 
nobility of his nature as indicated in his opinions and 
deeds. How entirely his public career has been deter- 
mined by a pure and strong sympathy for his fellow-men ; 
how entirely this sympathy has subordinated all desires 
for personal advantage ; how little even the fear of 
being injured in reputation or position has deterred him 
from taking the course which he thought equitable or 
generous, — ought to be manifest to every antagonist, how- 
ever bitter. A generosity that might almost be called 
romantic was obviously the feeling prompting sundry of 
those/ courses of action which have been commented 
upofi as errors. And nothing like a true conception of 
him can be formed, unless, along with dissent from them, 
there goes recognition of the fact that they resulted from 
the eagerness of a noble nature impatient to rectify in- 
justice and to further human welfare. 

It may perhaps be that my own perception of this 
pervading warmth of feeling has been sharpened by see- 
ing it exemplified, not in the form of expressed opinions 
only, but in the form of private actions ; for Mr. Mill 
was not one of those, who, to sympathy with their fellow- 
men in the abstract, join indifference to them in the 
concrete. There came from him generous acts that 
corresponded with his generous sentiments. I say this, 



40 JOHN STUART MILL. 

not from second-hand knowledge, but having in mind a 
remarkable example known only to myself and a few 
friends. I have hesitated whether to give this example, 
seeing that it has personal implications. But it affords 
so clear an insight into Mr. Mill's character, and shows 
so much more vividly than any description could do how 
fine were the motives swaying his conduct, that I think 
th£ occasion justifies disclosure of it. 

Some seven years ago, after bearing as long as was 
possible the continued losses entailed on me by the pub- 
lication of the " System of Philosophy," I notified to the 
subscribers that I should be obliged to cease at the close 
of the volume then in progress. Shortly after the issue 
of this announcement I received from Mr. Mill a letter, 
in which, after expressions of regret, and after naming a 
plan which he wished to prosecute for re-imbursing me, 
he went on to say, " In the next place . . . what I 
propose is, that you should write the next of your trea- 
tises, and that I should guarantee the publisher against 
loss \ i.e., should engage, after such length of time as 
may be agreed on, to make good any deficiency that may 
occur, not exceeding a given sum, — that sum being such 
as the publisher may think sufficient to secure him." 
Now, though these arrangements were of kinds that I 
could not bring myself to yield to, they none the less 
profoundly impressed me with Mr. Mill's nobility of 
feeling, and his anxiety to further what he regarded as a 
beneficial end. Such proposals would have been re- 
markable even had there been entire agreement of opin- 
ion ; but they were the more remarkable as being made 
by him under the consciousness that there existed be- 
tween us certain fundamental differences, openly avowed. 



HIS MORAL CHARACTER. 41 

I had, both directly and by implication, combated that 
form of the experiential theory of human knowledge 
which characterizes Mr. Mill's philosophy: in upholding 
Realism, I had opposed in decided ways those meta- 
physical systems to which his own Idealism was closely 
allied ; and we had long carried on a controversy respect- 
ing the test of truth, in which I had similarly attacked 
Mr. Mill's positions in an outspoken manner. That, 
under such circumstances, he should have volunteered 
his aid, and urged it upon me, as he did, on the ground 
that it would not imply any personal obligation, proved 
in him a very exceptional generosity. 

Quite recently I have seen afresh illustrated this fine 
trait, — this ability to bear with unruffled temper, and 
without any diminution of kindly feeling, the publicly- 
expressed antagonism of a friend. The last evening I 
spent at his house was in the company of another invited 
guest, who, originally agreeing with him entirely on cer- 
tain disputed questions, had some fortnight previously 
displayed his change of view, — nay, had publicly criti- 
cised some of Mr. Mill's positions in a very undisguised 
manner. Evidently, along with his own unswerving 
allegiance to truth, there was in Mr. Mill an unusual 
power of appreciating in others a like conscientiousness, 
and so of suppressing any feeling of irritation produced 
by difference, — suppressing it, not in appearance only, 
but in reality, and that, too, under the most trying cir- 
cumstances. 

I should say indeed, that Mr. Mill's general charac- 
teristic, emotionally considered, was an unusual pre- 
dominance of the higher sentiments, — a predominance 
which tended, perhaps, both in theory and practice, to 



42 JOHN STUART MILL. 

subordinate the lower nature unduly. That rapid ad- 
vance of age which has been conspicuous for some years 
past, and which doubtless prepared the way for his 
somewhat premature death, may, I think, be regarded as 
the outcome of a theory of life which made learning and 
working the occupations too exclusively considered. 
But when we ask to what ends he acted out this theory, 
and in so doing too little regarded his bodily welfare, 
we see that even here the excess, if such we call it, was 
a noble one. Extreme desire to further human welfare 
was that to which he sacrificed himself. 

Herbert Spencer. 



IV. 

HIS BOTANICAL STUDIES. 

If we would have a just idea of any man's character, 
we should view it from as many points, and under as 
many aspects, as we can. The side-lights thrown by the 
lesser occupations of a life are often very strong, and 
bring out its less obvious parts into startling prominence. 
Much especially is to be learned of character by taking 
into consideration the employment of times of leisure or 
relaxation ; the occupation of such hours being due almost 
solely to the natural bent of the individual, without the 
interfering action of necessity or expediency. Most men, 
perhaps especially eminent men, have a " hobby," — some 
absorbing object, the pursuit of which forms the most 
natural avocation of their mind, and to which they turn 
with the certainty of at least satisfaction, if not of exqui- 
site pleasure. The man who follows any branch of nat- 
ural science in this way is almost always especially happy 
in its prosecution; and his mental powers are refreshed 
and invigorated for the more serious and engrossing if 
less congenial occupation of his life. Mr. Mill's hobby 
was practical field botany ; surely in all ways one very 
well suited to him. 

43 



44 JOHN STUART MILL. 

Of the tens of thousands who are acquainted with the 
philosophical writings of Mr. Mill, there are probably few 
beyond the circle of his personal friends who are aware 
that he was also an author in a modest way on botanical 
subjects, and a keen searcher after wild plants. His 
short communications on botany were chiefly if not en- 
tirely published in a monthly magazine called "The Phy- 
tologist," edited, from its commencement in i84i,by the 
late George Luxford, till his death, in 1854, and afterwards 
conducted by Mr. A. Irvine of Chelsea, an intimate 
friend of Mr. Mill's, till its discontinuance in 1863. ^ n 
the early numbers of this periodical especially will be 
found frequent notes and short papers on the facts of 
plant-distribution brought to light by Mr. Mill during his 
botanical rambles. His excursions were chiefly in the 
county of Surrey, and especially in the neighborhood of 
Guildford and the beautiful vale of the Sittingbourne, 
where he had the satisfaction of being the first to notice 
several plants of interest, as Polygonum dumetoru?n^ Isatis 
tinctoria, and Impatiens fulva, an American species of 
balsam, affording a very remarkable example of complete 
naturalization in the Wey and other streams connected 
with the lower course of the Thames. Mr. Mill says he 
first observed this interloper in 1822 at Albury, a date 
which probably marks about the commencement of his 
botanical investigations, if not that of the first notice of 
the plant in this country. Mr. Mill's copious MS. lists of 
observations in Surrey were subsequently forwarded to 
the late Mr. Salmon of Godalming, and have been since 
published with the large collection of facts made by that 
botanist in the " Flora of Surrey," printed under the 
auspices of the Holmesdale (Reigate) Natural History 



HIS BOTANICAL STUDIES. 45 

Club. Mr. Mill also contributed to the same scientific 
magazine some short notes on Hampshire botany, and is 
believed to have helped in the compilation of Mr. G. G. 
Mill's " Catalogue of the Plants of Great Marlow, Bucks." 
The mere recording of isolated facts of this kind of 
course affords no scope for any style in composition. It 
may, however, be thought worth while to reproduce here 
the concluding paragraph of a short article on " Spring 
Flowers in the South of Europe," as a sample of Mr. 
Mill's popular manner, as well as for its own sake as a 
fine description of a. matchless scene. He is describing 
the little mountain range of Albano, beloved of painters, 
and, after comparing its vernal flora with that in Eng- 
land, goes on : — 

" If we would ascend the highest member of the mountain 
group, the Monte Cavo, we must make the circuit of the 
north flank of the mountains of Marino, on the edge of the 
Albano Lake, and Rocca di Tassa, a picturesque village in 
the hollow mountain side, from which we climb through 
woods, abounding in Galanthus nivalus and Corydalis cava, 
to that summit which was the arx of Jupiter Latialis, and to 
which the thirty Latian cities ascended in solemn procession 
to offer their annual sacrifice. The place is now occupied 
by a convent, under the wall of which I gathered Omithoga- 
lum nutans ; and from its neighborhood I enjoyed a pano- 
ramic view, surely the most glorious, in its combination of 
natural beauty and grandeur of historical recollections, to be 
found anywhere on earth. The eye ranged from Terracina on 
one side to Veii on the other, and beyond Veii to the hills of 
Sutrium and Nepete, once covered by the Ciminian forests, 
then deemed an impenetrable barrier between the interior of 
Etruria and Rome. Below my feet the Alban mountain, with 
all its forest-covered folds, and in one of them the dark-blue 



46 JOHN STUART MILL. 

Lake of Nemi ; that of Albano, I think, was invisible. To the 
north, in the dim distance, the Eternal City ; to the west the 
eternal sea ; for eastern boundary, the long line of Sabine 
mountains from Soracte past Tibur and away towards Prce- 
neste. The range then passed behind the Alban group, but 
re-appeared to the south-east as the mountain crescent of 
Cora and Pometia, enclosing between its horns the Pontine 
marshes, which lay spread out below as far as the sea-line, 
extending east and west from Terracina in the bay of Fondi, 
the Volscian Anxur, to the angle of the coast where rises 
suddenly, between the marshes and the sea, the mountain 
promontory of Circeii, celebrated alike in history and in 
fable. Within the space visible from this one point, the des- 
tinies of the human race were decided. It took the Romans 
nearly five hundred years to vanquish and incorporate the 
warlike tribes who inhabited that narrow tract ; but, this being 
accomplished, two hundred more sufficed them to complete 
the conquest of the world." 

During his frequent and latterly-prolonged residence 
at Avignon, Mr. Mill, carrying on his botanical propen- 
sities, had become very well acquainted with the vegeta- 
tion of the district, and at the time of his death had col- 
lected a mass of notes and observations on the subject. 
It is believed to have been his intention to have printed 
these as the foundation of a flora of Avignon. 

In the slight contributions to the literature of botany 
made by Mr. Mill, there is nothing which gives any 
inkling of the great intellectual powers of their writer. 
Though always clear and accurate, they are merely 
such notes as any working botanical collector is able 
to supply in abundance. Mainly content with the 
pursuit as an outdoor occupation, with such an amount 
of home-work as was necessary to determine the names 



HIS BOTANICAL STUDIES. 47 

and affinities of the species, Mr. Mill never penetrated 
deeply into the philosophy of botany, so as to take 
rank among those who have, like Herbert Spencer, 
advanced that science by original work either of ex- 
periment or generalization, or have entered into the 
battle-field where the great biological questions of the 
day are being fought over. The writer of this notice 
well remembers meeting, a few years since, the (at 
that time) parliamentary logician, with his trousers 
turned up out of the mud, and armed with the tin 
insignia of his craft, busily occupied in the search after 
a marsh-loving rarity in a typical spongy wood on the 
clay to the north of London. 

But however followed, the investigation of nature 
cannot fail to influence the mind in the direction of a 
more just appreciation of the necessity of system in 
arrangement, and of the principles which must regu- 
late all attempts to express notions of system in a 
classification. Traces of this are not difficult to find 
in Mr. Mill's writings. It may be safely stated, that 
the chapters on classification in the " Logic " would 
not have taken the form they have, had not the writer 
been a naturalist as well as a logician. The views 
expressed so clearly in these chapters are chiefly 
founded on the actual needs experienced by the syste- 
matic botanist ; and the argument is largely sustained 
by references to botanical systems and arrangements. 
Most botanists agree with Mr. Mill in his objections 
to Dr. Whe well's views of a natural classification by 
resemblance to " types," instead of in accordance with 
well-selected characters ; and indeed the whole of 
these chapters are well deserving the careful study of 



48 JOHN STUART MILL. 

naturalists, notwithstanding that the wonderfully-rapid 
progress in recent years of new ideas, lying at the very 
root of all the natural sciences, may be thought by 
some to give the whole argument, in spite of its logical 
excellence, a somewhat antiquated flavor. How fully 
Mr. Mill recognized the great importance of the study 
of biological classifications, and the influence such a 
study must have had on himself, may be judged from 
the following quotation : — 

" Although the scientific arrangements of organic nature 
afford as yet the only complete example of the true principles 
of rational classification, whether as to the formation of 
groups or of series, those principles are applicable to all 
cases in which mankind are called upon to bring the various 
parts of any extensive subject into mental co-ordination. 
They are as much to the point when objects are to be classed 
for purposes of art or business as for those of science. The 
proper arrangement, for example, of a code of laws, depends 
on the same scientific conditions as the classifications in 
natural history ; nor could there be a better preparatory dis- 
cipline for that important function than the study of the 
principles of a natural arrangement, not only in the abstract, 
but in their actual application to the class of phenomena for 
which they were first elaborated, and which are still the best 
school for learning their use. Of this, the great authority on 
codification, Bentham, was perfectly aware ; and his early 
'Fragment on Government,' the admirable introduction to a 
series of writings unequalled in their department, contains 
clear and just views (as far as they go) on the meaning of a 
natural arrangement, such as could scarcely have occurred 
to anyone who lived anterior to the age of Linnaeus and 
Bernard de Jussieu " {System of Logic, ed. 6, ii., p. 288). 

Henry Trimen. 



V. 

HIS PLACE AS A CRITIC. 

Mr. Mill's achievements as an economist, logician, 
psychologist, and politician are known more or less 
vaguely to all educated men ; but his capacity and his 
actual work as a critic are comparatively little regarded. 
In the three volumes of his collected miscellaneous 
writings, very few of the papers are general reviews 
either of books or of men ; and even these volumes 
derive their character from the essays they contain on 
the severer subjects with which Mr. Mill's name has 
been more peculiarly associated. Nobody buys his 
" Dissertations and Discussions " for the sake of his 
theory of poetry, or his essays on Armand Carrel and 
Alfred de Vigny, noble though these are in many ways. 
His essay on Coleridge is very celebrated ; but it deals, 
not with Coleridge's place as a poet, but with his place 
as a thinker, — with Coleridge as the antagonistic 
power to Bentham in forming the opinions of the gen- 
eration now passing away. Still at such a time as 
this it is interesting to make some endeavor to esti- 
mate the value of what Mr. Mill has done in the way 
of criticism. It is at least worth while to examine 

4 49 



50 JOHN STUART MILL. 

whether one who has shown himself capable of grap- 
pling effectively with the driest and most abstruse 
problems that vex the human intellect was versatile 
enough to study poetry with an understanding heart, 
and to be alive to the distinctive powers of individual 
poets. 

It was in his earlier life, when his enthusiasm for 
knowledge was fresh, and his active mind, " all as 
hungry as the sea," was reaching out eagerly and 
strenuously to all sorts of food for thought, — literary, 
philosophical, and political, — that Mr. Mill set himself, 
among other things, to study and theorize upon poetry 
and the art's generally. He could hardly have failed 
to know the most recent efflorescence of English poe- 
try, living as he did in circles where the varied merits 
of the new poets were largely and keenly discussed. 
He had lived also for some time in France, and was 
widely read in French poetry. He had never passed 
through the ordinary course of Greek and Latin at 
school and college; but he had been taught by his 
father to read these languages, and had been accus- 
tomed from the first to regard their literature as litera- 
ture, and to read their poetry as poetiy. These were 
probably the main elements of his knowledge of poe- 
try. But it was not his way to dream or otherwise luxu- 
riate over his favorite poets for pure enjoyment. Mr. 
Mill was not a cultivator of art for art's sake. His 
was too fervid and militant a soul to lose itself in 
serene love and culture of the calmly beautiful. He 
read poetry for the most part with earnest, critical eye, 
striving to account for it, to connect it with the ten- 
dencies of the age ; or he read to find sympathy with 



HIS PLACE AS A CRITIC. 5 1 

his own aspirations after heroic energy. He read De 
Vigny and other French poets of his generation, with 
an eye to their relations to the convulsed and strug- 
ling state of France, and because they were compelled 
by their surroundings to take life ait serieux, and to 
pursue, with all the resources of their art, something 
different from beauty in the abstract. Luxurious pas- 
sive enjoyment or torpid half-enjoyment must have 
been a comparatively rare condition of his finely- 
strung, excitable, and fervid system. I believe that 
his moral earnestness was too imperious to permit 
much' of this. He was capable indeed of the most 
passionate admiration of beauty, but even that feeling 
seems to have been interpenetrated by a certain mili- 
tant apostolic fervor ; his love was as the love of a 
religious soldier for a patron saint who extends her 
aid and countenance to him in his wars. I do not 
mean to say that his mind was in a perpetual glow : I 
mean only that this surrender to impassioned trans- 
ports was more characteristic of the man than serene 
openness to influx of enjoyment. His " Thoughts on 
Poetry and its Varieties," while clear and strenuous 
as most of his thoughts were, are neither scientifically 
precise, nor do they contain any notable new idea not 
previously expressed by Coleridge, except perhaps the 
idea, that emotions are the main links of association 
in the poetic mind : still his working out of the defini- 
tion of poetry, his distinction between novels and 
poems, and between poetry and eloquence, is interest- 
ing as throwing light upon his own poetic susceptibili- 
ties. He holds that poetry is the ' " delineation of the 
deeper and more secret workings of human emotion." 



52 JOHN STUART MILL. 

It is curious to find one who is sometimes assailed as 
the advocate of a grovelling philosophy complaining 
that the chivalrous spirit has almost disappeared from 
books of education, that the youth of both sexes of 
the educated classes are growing up unromantic. 
" Catechisms," he says, " will be found a poor substi- 
tute for the old romances, whether of chivalry or faery, 
which, if they did not give a true picture of actual life, 
did not give a false one, since they' did not profess to 
give any, but (what was much better) filled the youth- 
ful imagination with pictures of heroic men, and of 
what are at least as much wanted, — heroic women." 

If Mr. Mill did not love poetry with a purely disin- 
terested love, but with an eye to its moral causes and 
effects, neither did he study character from mere 
delight in observing the varieties of mankind. Ar- 
mand Carrel the Republican journalist, Alfred de 
Vigny the Royalist poet, Coleridge the Conservative, 
and Bentham the Reformer, are taken up and ex- 
pounded, not as striking individuals, but as types of 
influences and tendencies. This habit of keeping in 
view mind in the abstract, or men in the aggregate, 
may have been in a large measure a result of his edu- 
cation by his father ; but I am inclined to think that 
he was of too ardent and pre-occupied a disposition, 
perhaps too much disposed to take favorable views 
of individuals, to be very sensitive to differences of 
character. It should not, however, be forgotten that 
in one memorable case he showed remarkable discrimi- 
nation. Soon after Mr. Tennyson published his second 
issue of poems, Mr. Mill reviewed them in " The 
Westminster Review " for July, 1835, and } with his 



HIS PLACE AS A CRITIC. 53 

usual earnestness and generosity, applied all his pow- 
ers to making a just estimate of the new aspirant. 
To have reprinted this among his miscellaneous writ- 
ings might have seemed rather boastful, as claiming 
credit for the first full recognition of a great poet : 
still it is a very remarkable review \ and one would 
hope it will not be omitted if there is to be any further 
collection of his casual productions. I shall quote two 
passages which seem obvious enough now, but which 
required true insight, as well as courageous generosity, 
to write them in 1835 : — 

" Of all the capacities of a poet, that which seems to have 
arisen earliest in Mr. Tennyson, and in which he most excels, 
is that of scene-painting in the higher sense of the term ; 
not the mere power of producing that rather vapid species 
of composition usually termed descriptive poetry, — for there 
is not in these volumes one passage of pure description, — 
but the power of creating scenery in keeping with some state 
of human feeling, so fitted to it as to be the embodied sym- 
bol of it, and to summon up the state of feeling itself with a 
force not to be surpassed by any thing but reality. 



" The poems which we have quoted from Mr. Tennyson 
prove incontestably that he possesses in an eminent degree 
the natural endowment of a poet, — the poetic temperament. 
And it appears clearly, not only from a comparison of the 
two volumes, but of different poems in the same volume, 
that with him the other element of poetic excellence, intel- 
lectual culture, is advancing both steadily and rapidly ; that 
he is not destined, like so many others, to be remembered for 
what he might have done rather than for what he did : that 



54 JOHN STUART MILL. 

he will not remain a poet of mere temperament, but is 
ripening into a true artist. . . . We predict, that, as Mr. 
Tennyson advances in general spiritual culture, these higher 
aims will become more and more predominant in his writ- 
ings ; that he will strive more and more diligently, and, even 
without striving, will be more and more impelled by the 
natural tendencies of an expanding character, towards what 
has been described as the highest object of poetry, — ' to 
incorporate the everlasting reason of man in forms visible 



This last sentence might easily be construed into a pre- 
diction of " In Memoriam " and " The Idyls of the 
King." 

If it is asked why Mr. Mill, with all his width of knowl- 
edge and sympathy, has achieved so little of a reputation 
as a miscellaneous writer, part of the reason no doubt is, 
that he sternly repressed his desultory tendencies, and 
devoted his powers to special branches of knowledge, 
attaining in them a distinction that obscured his other 
writings. Another reason is, that, although his style is 
extremely clear, he was for popular purposes danger- 
ously familiar with terms belonging more or less to the 
schools. He employed these in literary generalizations, 
without remembering that they were not equally famil- 
iar to his readers ; and thus general readers, like Tom 
Moore, or the author of the recent notice in "The 
Times," who read more for amusement than instruction, 
were disposed to consider Mr. Mill's style "vastly un- 
readable." 

W. Minto. 



VI. 

HIS WORK IN PHILOSOPHY. 

To a savage contemplating a railway train in motion, 
the engine would present itself as the master of the situa- 
tion, — the determining cause of the motion and direction 
of the train. It visibly takes the lead, it looks big and 
important, and it makes a great noise. Even people a 
long way up in the scale of civilization are in the habit 
of taking these attributes, perhaps not as the essential 
ones of leadership, but at all events as those by which 
a leader may be recognized. Still that blustering ma- 
chine, which puffs and snorts, and drags a vast multitude 
in its wake, is moving along a track determined by a 
man hidden away from the public gaze. A line of rail 
lies separated from an adjacent one, the pointsman 
moves a handle, and the foaming giant, that would, it 
may be, have sped on to his destruction and that of the 
passive crew who follow in his rear, is shunted to another 
line running in a different direction and to a more desir- 
able goal. 

The great intellectual pointsman of our age — the man 
who has done more than any other of this generation to 
give direction to the thought of his contemporaries — 

55 



56 JOHN STUART MILL. 

has passed away j and we are left to measure the loss to 
humanity by the result of his labors. Mr. Mill's achieve- 
ments in both branches of philosophy are such as to 
give him the foremost place in either. Whether we re- 
gard him as an expounder of the philosophy of mind or 
the philosophy of society, he is facile princeps. Still it 
is his work in mental science which will, in our opinion, 
be in future looked upon as his great contribution to the 
progress of thought. His work on political economy not 
only put into thorough repair the structure raised by Ad- 
am Smith, Malthus, and Ricardo, but raised it at least 
one story higher. His inestimable "System of Logic" 
was a revolution. It hardly needs, of course, to be 
said that he owed much to his predecessors, — that he 
borrowed from Whewell much of his classification, from 
Brown the chief lines of his theory of causation, from Sir 
John Herschel the main principles of the inductive meth- 
ods. Those who think this a disparagement of his work 
must have very little conception of the mass of original 
thought that still remains to Mr. Mill's credit, the great 
critical power that could gather valuable truths from so 
many discordant sources, and the wonderful synthetic 
ability required to weld these and his own contributions 
into one organic whole. 

When Mr. Mill commenced his labors, the only logic 
recognized was the syllogistic. Reasoning consisted 
solely, according to the then dominant school, in dedu- 
cing from general propositions other propositions less gen- 
eral. It was even asserted confidently, that nothing more 
was to be expected, — that an inductive logic was impos- 
sible. This conception of logical science necessitated 
some general propositions to start with ; and these gen- 



HIS WORK IN PHILOSOPHY. 57 

eral propositions being ex hypotJiesi incapable of being 
proved from other propositions, it followed, that, if they 
were known to us at all, they must be original data of 
consciousness. Here was a perfect paradise of question- 
begging. The ultimate major premise in every argument 
being assumed, it could of course be fashioned accord- 
ing to the particular conclusion it was called in to prove. 
Thus an " artificial ignorance," as Locke calls it, was 
produced, which had the effect of sanctifying prejudice 
by recognizing so-called necessities of thought as the 
only bases of reasoning. It is true, that outside of the 
logic of the schools great advances had been made in 
the rules of scientific investigation ; but these rules were 
not only imperfect in themselves, but their connection 
with the law of causation was but imperfectly realized, 
and their true relation to syllogism hardly dreamt of. 

Mr. Mill altered all this. He demonstrated that the 
general type of reasoning is neither from generals to par- 
ticulars, nor from particulars to generals, but from par- 
ticulars to particulars. " If from our experience of John, 
Thomas, &c, who once were living, but are now dead, we 
are entitled to conclude that all human beings are mor- 
tal, we might surely, without any logical inconsequence, 
have concluded at once from those instances, that the 
Duke of Wellington is mortal. The mortality of John, 
Thomas, and others is, after all, the whole evidence we 
have for the mortality of the Duke of Wellington. Not 
one iota is added to the proof by interpolating a general 
proposition." We not only may, according to Mr. Mill, 
reason from some particular instances to others, but we 
frequently do so. As, however, the instances which are 
sufficient to prove one fresh instance must be sufficient 



58 JOHN STUART MILL. « 

to prove a general proposition, it is most convenient to 
at once infer that general proposition, which then becomes 
a formula according to which (but not from which) any 
number of particular inferences may be made. The 
work of deduction is the interpretation of these formulae, 
and therefore, strictly speaking, is not inferential at all. 
The real inference was accomplished when the universal 
proposition was arrived at. 

It will easily be seen that this explanation of the de- 
ductive process completely turns the tables on the tran- 
scendental school. All reasoning is shown to be at 
bottom inductive. Inductions and their interpretation 
make up the whole of logic ; and to induction accordingly 
Mr. Mill devoted his chief attention. For the first time 
induction was treated as the opus magnum of logic, and 
the fundamental principles of science traced to their in- 
ductive origin. It was this, taken with his theory of the 
syllogism, which worked the great change. Both his 
" System of Logic " and his " Examination of Sir William 
Hamilton's Philosophy " are for the most part devoted to 
fortifying this position, and demolishing beliefs inconsist- 
ent with it. As a systematic psychologist Mr. Mill has 
not done so much as either Professor Bain or Mr. Her- 
bert Spencer. The perfection of his method, its applica- 
tion, and the uprooting of prejudices which stood in its 
way, — this was the task to which Mr. Mill applied him- 
self with an ability and success rarely matched and never 
surpassed. 

The biggest lion in the path was the doctrine of so- 
called " necessary truth." This doctrine was especially 
obnoxious to him, as it set up a purely subjective standard 
of truth, and a standard — as he was easily able to show 



HIS WORK IN PHILOSOPHY. 59 

— varying according to the psychological history of the 
individual. Such thinkers as Dr. Whewell and Mr. Her- 
bert Spencer had to be met in intellectual combat. Dr. 
Whewell held, not that the inconceivability of the contra- 
dictory of a proposition is a proof of its truth co-equal 
with experience, but that its value transcends experience. 
Experience may tell us what is; but it is by the impossi- 
bility of conceiving it otherwise that we know it must be. 
Mr. Herbert Spencer, too, holds that propositions whose 
negation is inconceivable have " a higher warrant than 
any other whatever." It is through this door that onto- 
logical belief was supposed to enter. " Things in them- 
selves" were to be believed in because we could not 
help it. Modern Noumenalists agree that we can know 
nothing more of " things in themselves " than their exist- 
ence ; but this they continue to assert with a vehemence 
only equalled by its want of meaning. 

In his " Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Phi- 
losophy," Mr. Mill gives battle to this mode of thought. 
After reviewing, in an opening chapter, the various views 
which have been held respecting the relativity of human 
knowledge, and stating his own doctrine, he proceeds to 
judge by this standard the philosophy of the absolute and 
Sir William Hamilton's relation to it. The argument is 
really on the question whether we have or have not an 
intuitioaj^f God ; though, as Mr. Mill says, " the name of 
God is veiled under two extremely abstract phrases, — 
'The Infinite ' and ' The Absolute.' " So profound and 
friendly a thinker as the late Mr. Grote held this raising 
of the veil inexpedient ; but he proved, by a mistake he 
fell into, the necessity of looking at the matter in the con- 
crete. He acknowledged the force of Mr. Mill's argu- 



60 JOHN STUART MILL. 

merit, that " The Infinite " must include " a farrago of 
contradictions;" but so also, he said, does the Finite. 
Now undoubtedly finite things, taken distributively, have 
contradictory attributes, but not as a class. Still less is 
there any one individual thing, " The Finite," in which 
these contradictory attributes inhere. But it was against 
a corresponding being, " The Infinite," that Mr. Mill was 
arguing. It is this that he calls a " fasciculus of contra- 
dictions," and regarded as the reductio ad absurdissimum 
of the transcendental philosophy. 

Mr. Mill's religious tendencies may very well be gath- 
ered from a passage in his review of Auguste Comte, a 
philosopher with whom he agreed on all points save those 
which are specially M. Comte's. " Candid persons of all 
creeds may be willing to admit, that if a person has an 
ideal object, his attachment and sense of duty towards 
which are able to control and discipline all his other sen- 
timents and propensities, and prescribe to him a rule of 
life, that person has a religion ; and though every one 
naturally prefers his own religion to any other, all must 
admit, that if the object of his attachment, and of this 
feeling of duty, is the aggregate of our fellow-creatures, 
this religion of the infidel cannot in honesty and con- 
science be called an intrinsically bad one. Many indeed 
may be unable to believe that this object is capable of 
gathering round it feelings sufficiently strong; but this 
is exactly the point on which a doubt can hardly remain 
in an intelligent reader of M. Comte : and we join with 
him in contemning, as equally irrational and mean, the 
conception of human nature as incapable of giving its 
love, and devoting its existence, to any object which can- 
not afford in exchange an eternity of personal enjoy- 



HIS WORK IN PHILOSOPHY. 6 1 

merit." Never has the libel of humanity involved in the 
current theology been more forcibly pointed out, with its 
constant appeal to low motives of personal gain, or still 
lower motives of personal fear. Never has the religious 
sentiment which must take the place of the present awe 
of the unknown been more clearly indicated. It is this 
noble sentiment which shines out from every page of Mr. 
Mill's writings and all his relations to his fellow-creatures : 
the very birds about his dwelling seemed to recognize 
it. It is this noble sentiment which infuses a soul of life 
into his teachings, and the enunciation and acting-out of 
which constitute him, not only the great philosopher, but 
also the great prophet of our time. 

J. H. Levy. 
6 



VII. 

HIS STUDIES IN MORALS AND JURISPRU- 
DENCE. 

The two chief characteristics of Mr. Mill's mind are 
conspicuous in the field of morals and jurisprudence- 
He united in an extraordinary degree an intense delight 
in thinking for its own sake, with an almost passionate 
desire to make his intellectual excursions contribute to 
the amelioration of the lot of mankind, especially of the 
poorer and suffering part of mankind. And yet he never 
allowed those high aims to clash with one another : he 
did not degrade his intellect to the sophistical office of 
finding reasons for a policy arising from mere emotion, 
nor did he permit it to run waste in barren speculations, 
which might have excited admiration, but never could 
have done any good. This is the reason why so many 
persons have been unable to understand him as the 
prophet of utilitarianism. A man of such exquisite feel- 
ing, of such pure conscientiousness, of such self-denying 
life, must surely be an advocate of what is called abso- 
lute morality. Utilitarianism is the proper creed of hard 
unemotional natures, who do not respond to the more 
subtle moral influences. Such is the view natural to 
those who cannot dissociate the word " utilitarianism " 
from the narrow meaning of utility, as contrasted with the 
62 



STUDIES IN MORALS AND JURISPRUDENCE. 63 

pleasures of art. The infirmity of human language ex- 
cuses such errors ; for the language in which controversy 
is conducted is so colored by sentiment that it may well 
happen that two shall agree on the thing, and fight to the 
death about the word. We need the support of such re- 
flections when we recall the history of such a word as 
" pleasure." To pursue pleasure, say the anti-utilita- 
rians, is a swinish doctrine. " Yes," replied Mr. Mill, 
" if men were swine, and capable only of the pleasures 
appropriate to that species of animals." Those who 
could not answer this argument, and at the same time 
cannot divest themselves of the association of pleasure 
with the ignoble, took refuge in the charge of inconsist- 
ency, and, finding there was not less but more nobility 
in Mr. Mill's writing than their own theory, accused him 
of abandoning the tradition of his school. Mahomet 
would not go to the mountain, and they pleased them- 
selves with the thought that the mountain had gone to 
Mahomet. Such a charge is really tantamount to a con- 
fession that popular antipathy was more easily excited by 
the word than by the real doctrine. Nevertheless Mr. 
Mill did an incalculable service in showing not less by 
his whole life, than by his writings, that utilitarianism 
takes account of all that is good in man's nature, and 
includes the highest emotions, as well as those that are 
more commonplace. He took away a certain reproach 
of narrowness, which was never in the doctrine, and which 
was loudly, though perhaps with little reason, urged 
against some of its most conspicuous supporters. An 
important addition to the theory of morals is also con- 
tained in the book on " Utilitarianism." His analysis of 
"justice" is one of the happiest efforts of inductive defi- 



64 JOHN STUART MILL. 

nition to be found in any book on ethics. From any 
point of view, it must be regarded as a valuable addition 
to the literature of ethical philosophy. 

The somewhat technical subject of jurisprudence was 
not too much for Mr. Mill's immense power of assimi- 
lation. One of his earliest efforts was as editor of 
Bentham's "Rationale of Judicial Evidence." He must, 
therefore, at an early period, have been master of the 
most original and enlightened theory of judicial evidence 
that the world has seen. He lived to see nearly all the 
important innovations proposed by Bentham become part 
and parcel of the law of the land ; one of the last relics of 
bigotry — the exclusion of honest atheists (and only of 
such) from the witness-box — having been removed two or 
three years ago. Mr. Mill, in after years, attended Austin's 
famous lectures on jurisprudence, taking extensive notes ; 
so that he was able to supply the matter wanting to com- 
plete two important lectures, as they were printed in the 
first edition of Austin's works. Among the " Dissertations 
and Discussions," is a criticism of Austin's work, which 
shows that he was far more than a scholar, — a most com- 
petent judge of his master. He pointed out in Austin's 
definition of " right " a real defect. One of the points 
that Austin elaborated most was a classification such as 
might serve for a scientific code of law. Mr. Mill fully 
acknowledged the merits of the scheme, but laid his fin- 
ger unerringly on its weakest part. His remarks show, 
that, if he had followed up the subject with an adequate 
knowledge of any good system of law, he would have 
rivalled or surpassed his achievements in other depart- 
ments of knowledge. 

W. A. Hunter. 



VIIL 

HIS WORK IN POLITICAL ECONOMY. 

The task of fairly estimating the value of Mr. Mill's 
achievements in political econcmy — and indeed the 
same remark applies to what he has done in every 
department of philosophy — is rendered particularly 
difficult by a circumstance which constitutes their prin- 
cipal merit. The character of his intellectual, no less 
than of his moral nature, led him to strive to connect 
his thoughts, whatever was the branch of knowledge 
at which he labored, with the previously-existing body 
of speculation, to fit them into the same framework, 
and exhibit them as parts of the same scheme ; so that 
it might be truly said of him, that he was at more pains 
to conceal the originality and independent value of his 
contributions to the stock of knowledge than most 
writers are to set forth those qualities in their com- 
positions. As a consequence of this, hasty readers of 
his works, while recognizing the comprehensiveness of 
his mind, have sometimes denied its originality ; and 
in political economy in particular he has been fre- 
quently represented as little more than an expositor 
and popularizer of Ricardo. It cannot be denied that 
6* 65 



66 JOHN STUART MILL. 

there is a show of truth in this representation ; about 
as much as there would be in asserting that Laplace 
and Herschel were the expositors and popularizers of 
Newton, or that Faraday performed a like office for 
Sir Humphry Davy. In truth, this is an incident of 
all progressive science. The cultivators in each age 
may, in a sense, be said to be the interpreters and 
popularizers of those who have preceded them ; and 
it is in this sense, and in this sense only, that this part 
can be attributed to Mill. In this respect he is to be 
strongly contrasted with the great majority of writers 
on political economy, who, on the strength perhaps 
of a verbal correction or an unimportant qualification 
of a received doctrine, if not on the score of a pure 
fallacy, would fain persuade us that they have achieved 
a revolution in economic doctrine, and that the entire 
science must be rebuilt from its foundation in con- 
formity with their scheme. This sort of thing has 
done infinite mischief to the progress of economic 
science ; and one of Mill's great merits is, that both by 
example and by precept he steadily discountenanced 
it. His anxiety to affiliate his own speculations to 
those of his predecessors is a marked feature in all 
his philosophical works, and illustrates at once the 
modesty and comprehensiveness of his mind. 

It is quite true that Mill, as an economist, was 
largely indebted to Ricardo ; and he has so fully and 
frequently acknowledged the debt, that there is some 
danger of rating the obligation too highly. As he 
himself used to put it, Ricardo supplied the backbone 
of the science ; but it is not less certain that the 
limbs, the joints, the muscular developments, — all that 



HIS WORK IN POLITICAL ECONOMY. 6? 

renders political economy a complete and organized 
body of knowledge, — have been the work of Mill. In 
Ricardo's great work, the fundamental doctrines of 
production, distribution, and exchange have been laid 
down, but for the most part in mere outline ; so much 
so, that superficial students are in general wholly 
unable to connect his statement of principles with the 
facts, as we find them, of industrial life. Hence we 
have innumerable " refutations of Ricardo," — almost 
invariably refutations of the writers' own misconcep- 
tions. In Mill's exposition, the connection between 
principles and facts becomes clear and intelligible. 
The conditions and modes of action are exhibited by 
which human wants and desires — the motive powers 
of industry — come to issue in the actual phenomena 
of wealth, and political economy becomes a system of 
doctrines susceptible of direct application to human 
affairs. As an example, I may refer to Mill's develop- 
ment of Ricardo's doctrine of foreign trade. In 
Ricardo's pages, the fundamental principles of that 
department of exchange are indeed laid down with a 
master's hand ; but for the majority of readers they 
have little relation to the actual commerce of the 
world. Turn to Mill, and all becomes clear. Prin- 
ciples of the most abstract kind are translated into 
concrete language, and brought to explain familiar 
facts ; and this result is achieved, not simply or chiefly 
by virtue of mere lucidity of exposition, but through 
the discovery and exhibition of modifying conditions 
and links in the chain of causes overlooked by 
Ricardo. It was in his " Essays on Unsettled Ques- 
tions in Political Economy " that his views upon this 



68 JOHN STUART MILL. 

subject were first given to the world, — a work of which 
M. Cherbuliez of Geneva speaks as " un travail le plus 
important et le plus original clont la science econo- 
mique se soit enrichie depuis une vingtaine d'annees." 
On some points, however, and these points of 
supreme importance, the contributions of Mill to eco- 
nomic science are very much more than developments 
— even though we understand that term in its largest 
sense — of any previous writer. No one can have 
studied political economy in the works of its earlier 
cultivators without being struck with the dreariness 
of the outlook which, in the main, it discloses for the 
human race. It seems to have been Ricardo's delib- 
erate opinion, that a substantial improvement in the 
condition of the mass of mankind was impossible. He 
considered it as the normal state of things that wages 
should be at the minimum requisite to support the la- 
borer in physical health and strength, and to enable him 
to bring up a family large enough to supply the wants of 
the labor-market. A temporary improvement indeed, as 
the consequence of expanding commerce and growing 
capital, he saw that there might be ; but he held that 
the force of the . principle of population was always 
powerful enough so to augment the supply of labor as 
to bring wages ever again down to the minimum point. 
So completely had this belief become a fixed idea in 
Ricardo's mind, that he confidently drew from it the 
consequence, that in no case could taxation fall on the 
laborer, since — living, as a normal state of things, on 
the lowest possible stipend adequate to maintain him 
and his family — he would inevitably, he argued x trans- 
fer the burden to his employer ; and a tax nominally 



HIS WORK IN POLITICAL ECONOMY. 69 

on wages would in the result become invariably a tax 
upon profits. On this point Mill's doctrine leads to 
conclusions directly opposed to Ricardo's, and to those 
of most preceding economists. And it will illustrate 
his position as a thinker, in relation to them, if we 
note how this result was obtained. Mill neither de- 
nied the premises nor disputed the logic of Ricardo's 
argument : he accepted both ; and in particular he 
recognized fully the force of the principle of popula- 
tion ; but he took account of a further premise which 
Ricardo had overlooked, and which, duly weighed, led 
to a reversal of Ricardo's conclusion. The minimum 
of wages, even such as it exists in the case of the 
worst-paid laborer, is not the very least sum that hu- 
man nature can subsist upon : it is something more 
than this ; in the case of all above the worst-paid 
class it is decidedly more. The minimum is, in truth, 
not a physical but a moral minimum^ and as such, is 
capable of being altered with the changes in the moral 
character of those whom it affects. In a word, each 
class has a certain standard of comfort below which it 
will not consent to live, or at least to multiply, — a 
standard, however, not fixed, but liable to modification 
with the changing circumstances of society, and which, 
in the case of a progressive community, is, in point of 
fact, constantly rising, as moral and intellectual influ- 
ences are brought more and more effectually to bear 
on the masses of the people. This was the new pre- 
mise brought by Mill to the elucidation of the wages 
question; and it sufficed to change the'entire aspect of 
human life regarded from the point of view of politi- 
cal economy. The practical deductions made from it 



70 JOHN STUART MILL. 

were set forth in the celebrated chapter on " The Fu- 
ture of the Industrial Classes," — a chapter which it 
is no exaggeration to say places a gulf between Mill 
and all who preceded him, and opens an entirely new 
vista to economic speculation. 

The doctrine of the science with which Mill's name 
has been most prominently associated within the last 
few years is that which relates to the economic nature 
of land, and the consequences to which this should 
lead in practical legislation. It is very commonly 
believed, that on this point Mill has started aside from 
the beaten highway of economic thought, and pro- 
pounded views Wholly at variance with those generally 
entertained by orthodox economists.* No economist 
need be told that this is an entire mistake. In truth, 
there is no portion of the economic field in which 
Mill's originality is less conspicuous than in that 
which deals with the land. His ' assertion of the 
peculiar nature of landed property, and again his doc- 
trine as to the " unearned increment " of value arising 
from land with the growth of society, are simply direct 
deductions from Ricardo's theory of rent, and cannot 
be consistently denied by any one who accepts that 
theory. All that Mill has done here has been to point 
the application of principles all but universally ac- 
cepted to the practical affairs of life. This is not the 
place to consider how far the plan proposed by him 
for this purpose is susceptible of practical realization ; 
but it may at least ba confidently stated, that the sci- 
entific basis on which his proposal rests is no strange 
novelty invented by him, but simply a principle as 
fundamental and widely recognized as any within the 
range of the science of which it forms a part. 



HIS WORK IN POLITICAL ECONOMY. /I 

I have just remarked that Mill's originality is less 
conspicuous in relation to the economic theory of land 
than in other problems of political economy ; but the 
reader must not understand me from this to say, that 
he has not very largely contributed to the elucidation 
of this topic. He has indeed done so, though not, as 
is commonly supposed, by setting aside principles 
established by his predecessors, but, as his manner 
was, while accepting those principles, by introducing a 
new premise into the argument. The new premise 
introduced in this case was the influence of custom as 
modifying the action of competition. • The existence 
of an active competition, on the one hand between 
farmers seeking farms, on the other between farming 
and other modes of industry as offering inducements 
to the investment of capital, is a constant assumption 
in the reasoning by which Ricardo arrived at his theory 
of rent. Granting this assumption, it followed that 
farmers as a rule would pay neither higher nor lower 
rents than would leave them in possession of the aver- 
age profits on their capital current in the country. 
Mill fully acknowledged the force of this reasoning, 
and accepted the conclusion as true wherever the con- 
ditions assumed were realized ; but he proceeded to 
point out, that, in point of fact, the conditions are not 
realized over the greater portion of the world, and, as 
a consequence, that the rent actually paid by the cul- 
tivators to the owners of the soil by no means, as a 
general rule, corresponds with that portion of the 
produce which Ricardo considered as properly "rent." 
The real regulator of actual rent over the greater part 
of the habitable globe was, he showed, not competition, 



72 JOHN STUART MILL. 

but custom ; and he further pointed out that there are 
countries in which the actual rent paid by the cultiva- 
tors is governed neither by the causes set forth by Ri- 
cardo, nor yet by custom, but by a third cause different 
from either, — the absolute will of the owners of the 
soil, controlled only by the physical exigencies of the 
cultivator, or by the fear of his vengeance if disturbed 
in his holding. The recognition of this state of things 
threw an entirely new light over the whole problem of 
land-tenure, and plainly furnished grounds for legisla- 
tive interference in the contracts between landlords 
and tenants. Its application to Ireland was obvious ; 
and Mill himself, as the world knows, did not hesitate 
to urge the application with all the energy and enthu- 
siasm which he invariably threw into every cause that 
he espoused. 

In the above remarks, I have attempted to indicate 
briefly some few of the salient features in Mill's con- 
tributions to the science of political economy. There 
is still one more which ought not to be omitted from 
even the most meagre summary. Mill was not the 
first to treat political economy as a science ; but he was 
the first, if not to perceive, at least to enforce the 
lesson, that, just because it is a science, its conclusions 
carried with them no obligatory force with reference 
to human conduct. As a science, it tells us that cer- 
tain modes of action lead to certain results • but it 
remains for each man to judge of the value of the 
results thus brought about, and to decide whether or 
not it is worth while to adopt the means necessary for 
their attainment. In the writings of the economists 
who preceded Mill, it is very generally assumed, that to 



HIS WORK IN POLITICAL ECONOMY. 73 

prove that a certain course of conduct tends to the 
most rapid increase of wealth suffices to entail upon 
all who accept the argument the obligation of adopt- 
ing the course which leads to this result. Mill abso- 
lutely repudiated this inference, and, while accepting 
the theoretic conclusion, held himself perfectly free to 
adopt in practice whatever course he preferred. It 
was not for political economy or for any science to say 
what are the ends most worthy of being pursued by 
human beings ; the task of science is complete when 
it shows us the means by which the ends may be 
attained ; but it is for each individual man to decide 
how far the end is desirable at the cost which its 
attainment involves. In a word, the sciences should 
be our servants, and not our masters. This was a 
lesson which Mill was the first to enforce, and by 
enforcing which he may be said to have emancipated 
economists from the thraldom of their own teaching. 
It is in no slight degree through the constant recogni- 
tion of its truth, that he has been enabled to divest of 
repulsiveness even the most abstract speculations, and 
to impart a glow of human interest to all that he has 
touched. 

J. E. Cairnes. 



IX. 

HIS INFLUENCE AT THE UNIVERSITIES. 

Some time ago, when there was no reason to suppose 
that we should so soon have to mourn the loss of the 
great thinker and of the kind friend who has just 
passed away, I had occasion to remark upon the influ- 
ence which Mr. Mill had exercised at the universities. 
I will quote my words as they stand, because it is diffi- ^ 
cult to write with impartiality about one whose recent 
death we are deploring ; and Mr. Mill would, I am 
sure, have been the first to say, that it is certainly not 
honoring the memory of one who is dead to lavish 
upon him praise which would not be bestowed upon 
him if he were living. I will therefore repeat my 
words exactly as they were written two years since : 
" Any one who has resided during the last twenty years 
at either of our universities must have noticed that 
Mr. Mill is the author who has most powerfully influ- 
enced nearly all the young men of the greatest prom- 
ise." In thus referring to the powerful influence 
exercised by Mr. Mill's works, I do not wish it to be 
supposed that this influence is to be measured by the 
extent to which his books form a part of the university 
74 



HIS INFLUENCE AT THE UNIVERSITIES. 75 

curriculum. His " Logic " has no doubt become a 
standard examination-book at Oxford. At Cambridge 
the mathematical and classical triposes still retain 
their former prestige. The moral science tripos, 
though increasing in importance, still attracts a com- 
paratively small number of students, and there is 
probably no other examination for which it is' neces- 
sary to read Mr. Mill's " Logic " and " Political Econo- 
my." This fact affords the most satisfactory evidence 
that the influence he has exerted is spontaneous, and 
is therefore likely to be lasting in its effects. If stu- 
dents had been driven to read his books by the neces- 
sity which examinations impose, it is quite possible, 
that, after the examination, the books might never be 
looked at again. A resident, however, at the univer- 
sity can scarcely fail to be struck with the fact, that 
many who perfectly well know that they will never in 
any examination be asked to answer a question in logic 
or political economy are among the most diligent stu- 
dents of Mr. Mill's books. . When I was an under- 
graduate, I well remember that most of my friends who 
were likely to take high mathematical honors were 
already so intimately acquainted with Mr. Mill's writ- 
ings, and were so much imbued with - their spirit, that 
they might have been regarded as his disciples. Many 
looked up to him as their teacher ; many have since 
felt that he then instilled into them principles, which, to 
a great extent, have guided their conduct in after life. 
Any one who is intimately acquainted with Mr. Mill's 
writings will readily understand how it is that they 
possess such peculiar attractiveness for the class of 
readers to whom I am now referring. There is nothing 



y6 JOHN STUART MILL. 

more characteristic in his writings than generosity and 
courage. He always states his opponent's case with the 
most judicial impartiality. He never shrinks from the 
expression of opinion because he thinks it unpopular ; and 
there is nothing so abhorrent to him as that bigotry 
which prevents a man from appreciating what is just and 
true in the views of those who differ from him. This 
toleration, which is so predominant a feature of his writ- 
ings, is probably one of the rarest of all qualities in a 
controversialist. Those who do not possess it always 
produce an impression that they are unfair ; and this im- 
pression, once produced, exercises a repelling influence 
upon the young. Another cause of the attractiveness of 
Mr. Mill's writings is the precision with which his views 
are expressed, and the systematic form which is given to 
his opinions. Confidence is reposed in him as a guide, 
because it is found that there is some definite goal to 
which he is leading his readers : he does not conduct 
them they know not whither, as a traveller who has lost 
his way in a mist, or a navigator who is steering his ship 
without a compass. The influence exercised by Mr. 
Mill does not chiefly depend upon the originality of his 
writings. He did not make any great discovery which 
will form an epoch in the history of human thought ; he 
did not create a new science, or become the founder of 
a new system of philosophy. There is perhaps not so 
much originality in his " Political Economy " as in Ricar- 
do's ; but there are thousands who never thought of read- 
ing Ricardo who were so much attracted by Mr. Mill's 
book, that its influence might be traced throughout the 
rest of their lives. No doubt one reason of his attractive- 
ness as a writer, in addition to other circumstances to which 



HIS INFLUENCE AT THE UNIVERSITIES. J7 

allusion has already been made, is the unusual power he 
possessed in applying philosophical principles to the 
facts of ordinary life. To those who believe that the in- 
fluence Mr. Mill has exercised at the universities has 
been in the highest degree beneficial, — to those who 
think that his books not only afford the most admirable 
intellectual training, but also are calculated to produce a 
most healthy moral influence, — it may be some consola- 
tion, now that we are deploring his death, to know, that, 
although he has passed away, he may still continue to 
be a teacher and a. guide. I believe he never visited 
the English universities : it was consequently entirely 
through his books that he was known. Not one of those 
who were his greatest admirers at Cambridge, when I 
was an undergraduate, ever saw him till many years after 
they had left the University. I remember that we often 
used to say, that there was nothing we should esteem so 
great a privilege as to spend an hour in Mr. Mill's soci- 
ety. There is probably no bond of attachment stronger 
than that which unites a pupil to one who has attracted 
him to new intellectual pursuits, and has awakened in 
him new interests in life. Some four or five years after 
taking my degree, I met Mr. Mill for the first time ; and 
from that hour an intimate friendship commenced, which 
I shall always regard as a peculiarly high privilege to 
have enjoyed. Intimacy with Mr. Mill convinced me, 
that, if he had happened to live at either of the universi- 
ties, his personal influence would have been no less strik- 
ing than his intellectual influence. Nothing, perhaps, 
was so remarkable in his character as his tenderness to 
the feelings of others, and the deference with which he 
listened to those in every respect inferior to himself. 



78 JOHN STUART MILL. 

There never was a man who was more entirely free from 
that intellectual conceit which breeds disdain. Nothing 
is so discouraging and heart-breaking to young people 
as the sneer of an intellectual cynic. A sarcasm about 
an act of youthful mental enthusiasm not only often casts 
a fatal chill over the character, but is resented as an in- 
jury never to be forgiven. The most humble youth 
would have found in Mr. Mill the warmest and most 
kindly sympathy. 

It may be said, if Mr. Mill has not become the 
•founder of a new philosophical school at the universi- 
ties, where must we seek the result of his influence ? I 
cannot give any thing like a complete reply to this ques- 
tion now ; but any one who has observed the marked 
change which has come over the mode of thought in the 
universities in the last few years will be able to form 
some idea of the kind of influence which has been exer- 
cised by Mr. Mill. Speaking generally, he has obtained 
a very wide acceptance of the utilitarian doctrines : they 
were presented by Bentham in a form so harsh and unat- 
tractive as to produce an almost repelling effect. Mr. 
Mill, on the contrary, showed that the utilitarian philos- 
ophy might inspire the most active benevolence and the 
most generous enthusiasm. This acceptance of utilita- 
rianism has produced a very striking effect in modifying 
the political opinions prevalent in the universities. For 
many years what has been known as the liberalism of 
young Oxford and Cambridge is in many respects funda- 
mentally different from what is known as liberalism out- 
side the universities. The liberalism of the universities, 
as well as that of the Manchester school, are both pop- 
ularly described as " advanced ; " but between the two 



HIS INFLUENCE AT THE UNIVERSITIES. 79 

there is in many. essentials the widest possible diver- 
gence. What is known as Philosophical Radicalism will 
long bear the impression of Mr. Mill's teaching. 

It should be particularly remembered, that, avowing 
himself a liberal, he never forgot that it is the essence of 
true liberalism to be tolerant of opinions from which one 
differs, and to appreciate the advantages of branches of 
learning to which one has not devoted special attention. 
It is somewhat rare to find that those who profess them- 
selves undoubted liberals are prepared to accept a con- 
sistent application of their principles. There is almost 
sure to be some region of inquiry which they regard as 
so dangerous that they regret that any one should enter 
upon it. Sometimes it is said that freedom of thought, 
though admirable in politics, is mischievous in theology : 
some, advancing what they believe to be one step further, 
express a general approbation of freedom of thought, 
but stigmatize free-thinkers. Again, it may be not infre- 
quently observed that devotion to some particular study 
makes men illiberal to other branches of knowledge. 
Metaphysicians and physiologists who have never taken 
the trouble to master mathematical principles dogmati- 
cally denounce the influence of mathematics. Eminent 
classics and mathematicians have too frequently sneered 
at each other's studies. No one was ever more free 
from this kind of bigotry than Mr. Mill, and it probably 
constitutes one of the main causes of his influence. 
Some years ago I happened to be conversing at Cam- 
bridge with three men who were respectively of great 
eminence in mathematics, classics, and physiology. We 
were discussing the inaugural address which Mr. Mill 
had just delivered as rector of the St. Andrew's Uni- 



80 JOHN STUART MILL. 

versity. The mathematician said, that he had never seen 
the advantages to be derived from the study of mathe- 
matics so justly and so forcibly described ; the same re- 
mark was made by the classic about classics, and by 
the physiologist about natural science. No more fitting 
homage can probably be offered to the memory of one 
to whom so many of us are bound by the strongest ties 
of gratitude and affection, than if, profiting by his exam- 
ple, we endeavor to remember, that above all things he 
was just to his opponents, that he appreciated opinions 
from which he differed, and that one of his highest 
claims to our admiration' was his general sympathy with 
all branches of knowledge. 

Henry Fawcett. 



X. 



HIS INFLUENCE AS A PRACTICAL 
POLITICIAN. 

Every one must be familiar with the often-expressed 
opinion, that, as a practical politician, Mr. Mill's career 
was essentially a failure. It has been said a thousand 
times that the principal result of his brief representation 
of Westminster was to furnish an additional proof, if 
one were wanted, that a philosopher is totally incapable 
of exercising any useful influence in the direction of 
practical politics. It is proposed briefly to examine this 
opinion ; though it may, indeed, with truth be urged that 
the present time is not calculated to make the examina- 
tion an impartial one. The inquiry involves an almost 
constant reference, either expressed or implied, to Mr. 
Mill's personal character and influence, and it is hardly 
possible for those who are mourning him as a friend to 
speak of these dispassionately. It is perhaps hardly 
necessary at such a time as this to ask the indulgence 
of the reader if this unworthy tribute to the memory of 
a great man is colored by personal reverence and grati- 
tude. 

When it is said that Mr. Mill failed as a practical poli- 

81 



82 JOHN STUART MILL. 

tician, there are two questions to be asked : " Who says 
he has failed ? " And " What is it said that he failed 
in ? " Now, it seems that the persons who are loudest in 
the assertion of his failure are precisely those to whom 
the reforms advocated by Mr. Mill in his writings are dis- 
tasteful. They are those who pronounce all schemes of 
electoral reform embodying the principle of proportional 
representation to be the result of a conspiracy of fools 
and rogues \ they are those who sneer at the " fanciful 
rights of women ; " they are those who think our pres- 
ent land tenure eminently calculated to make the rich 
contented, and keep the poor in their proper places ; 
they are those who believe that republicans and atheists 
ought to be treated like vermin, and exterminated accord- 
ingly ; they are those who think that all must be well 
with England if her imports and exports are increasing, 
and that we are justified in repudiating our foreign en- 
gagements, if to maintain them would have an injurious 
effect upon trade. The assertion of failure coming from 
such persons does not mean that Mr. Mill failed to pro- 
mote the practical success of those objects the advocacy 
of which forms the chief feature of his political writings. 
It is rather a measure of his success in promoting these 
objects, and of the disgust with which his success is re- 
garded by those who are opposed to his political ideas. 
It was known, or ought to have been known, by every 
one who supported Mr. Mill's candidature in 1865, that 
he was a powerful advocate of proportional representa- 
tion, and that he attributed the very greatest importance 
to the political, industrial, and social emancipation of 
women ; he advocated years ago, in his " Political Econ- 
omy," the scheme of land-tenure reform with which his 



HIS INFLUENCE AS A PRACTICAL POLITICIAN. 83 

name is now practically associated ; his essay " On Liber- 
ty " left no doubt as to his opinions upon the value of 
maintaining freedom of thought and speech ; his article 
entitled " A Few Words on Non-intervention " might have 
warned the partisans of the Manchester school that he 
had no sympathy with their views on foreign policy. 
There is little doubt that the majority of Mr. Mill's sup- 
porters in 1865 did not know what his political opinions 
were, and that they voted for him simply on his reputa- 
tion as a great thinker. A large number, however, prob- 
ably supported him, knowing in a general way the views 
advocated in his writings, but thinking that he would 
probably be like many other politicians, and not allow 
his practice to be in the least degree influenced by his 
theories. Just as radical heirs-apparent are said to lay 
aside all inconvenient revolutionary opinions when they 
come to the throne, it was believed that Mr. Mill in Par- 
liament would be an entirely different person from Mr. 
Mill in his study. It was one thing to write an essay 
in favor of proportional representation : it was another 
thing to assist in the insertion of the principle of propor- 
tional representation in the Reform Bill, and to form a 
school of practical politicians who took care to insure 
the adoption of this principle in the school-board elec- 
tions. It was one thing to advocate theoretically the 
claims of women to representation : it was another to in- 
troduce the subject into the House of Commons, to pro- 
mote an active political organization in its favor, and 
thus to convert it, from a philosophical dream, into a 
question of pressing and practical importance. It was 
one thing to advocate freedom of thought and discussion 
in all political and religious questions : it was another to 



84 JOHN STUART MILL. 

speak respectfully of Mr. Odger, and to send Mr. Brad- 
laugh a contribution toward the expenses of his candida- 
ture for Northampton. The discovery that Mr. Mill's 
chief objects in Parliament were the same as his chief 
objects out of Parliament branded him at once as an un- 
practical man : and his success in promoting these objects 
constituted his " failure " as a politician. His fearless 
disregard of unpopularity, as manifested in his prosecu- 
tion, in conjunction with Mr. P. A. Taylor, of Ex-Gov- 
ernor Eyre, was another proof that he was entirely un- 
like the people who call themselves "practical politi- 
cians." His persistency in conducting this prosecution 
was one of the main causes of his defeat at the election 
of 1868. 

If to be unpopular because he promoted the practical 
success of the opinions his life had been spent in advo- 
cating is to have failed, then Mr. Mill failed. If, how- 
ever, the success of a politician is to be measured by the 
degree in which he is able personally to influence the 
course of politics, and attach to himself a school of po- 
litical thought, then Mr. Mill, in the best meaning of the 
words, has succeeded. If Mr. Mill had died ten years 
ago, is it probable that his views on representative re- 
form would have received so much practical recognition 
as they have obtained during the last five years ? If he 
had never entered the House of Commons, would the 
women's-sufFrage question be where it now is ? Before 
he introduced the subject into the House of Commons 
in 1867, it may be said to have had no political exist- 
ence in this country. The whole question was held in 
such contempt by " practical politicians," that the House 
would probably have refused to listen to any member, 



HIS INFLUENCE AS A PRACTICAL POLITICIAN. 85 

except Mr. Mill, who advocated the removal of the po- 
litical disabilities of women. Mr. Mill was the one 
member of Parliament whose high intellectual position 
enabled him to raise the question without being laughed 
down as a fool. To every one's astonishment, seventy- 
four members followed Mr. Mill into the lobby : the 
most sanguine estimate, previous to the division, of the 
number of his supporters had been thirty. Since that 
time, the movement in favor of women's suffrage has 
made rapid and steady progress. Like all genuine po- 
litical movements, it has borne fruit in many measures 
which are intended to remove the grievances of which 
those who advocate the movement complain : among 
these collateral results of the agitation for women's suf- 
frage, may be enumerated the Married Women's Prop- 
erty Act, the Custody of Infants Bill, and the admission 
of women to the municipal and educational franchises 
and to seats upon school-boards. A large part of the 
present anxiety to improve the education of girls and 
women is also due to the conviction that the political 
disabilities of women will not be maintained. In this 
question of the general improvement of the position of 
women, Mr. Mill's influence can scarcely be over-esti- 
mated. All through his life he regarded it as a question 
of first-rate importance ; and the extent to which he was 
able practically to promote it is sufficient in itself to 
make his career as a politician a success. A strong proof 
of the vitality of the movement, of which he was the prin- 
cipal originator, is that his death cannot injuriously affect 
its activity or its prospects of ultimate success. What 
he has done for women is final : he gave to their service 
the best powers of his mind and the best years of his 



86 JOHN STUART MILL. 

life. His death consecrates the gift : it can never lessen 
its value. 

What is true of Mr. Mill's influence on the women's- 
suffrage question is true also of the other political move- 
ments in which he took an active interest. He was able 
in all of these powerfully to influence the political his- 
tory of his day in the direction in which he desired to 
influence it. If this is failure, failure is worth much 
more than success. 

Of the influence of Mr. Mill's personal character on 
those who were his political associates, it is difficult to 
speak too warmly. No one could be with him or work 
with him without being conscious of breathing a purer 
moral atmosphere : he made mean personal ambitions 
and rivalries seem despicable and ridiculous, not so 
much by any thing that he said directly on the subject, 
as by contrast with his own noble, strong, and generous 
nature. It is almost impossible to imagine that any one 
could be so insensible to the high morality of Mr. Mill's 
character as to suggest to him any course of conduct that 
was not entirely upright and consistent. A year or two 
ago, however, a story was told of a gentleman who asked 
Mr. Mill to stand for an Irish constituency, and stated 
that the only opinion it would be necessary for him to 
change was the one he had so often expressed against 
denominational education. A smile at the man's stupid- 
ity, and the remark, " I should like to have seen Mill's 
face when he heard this suggestion," is the almost inva- 
riable comment on this story. It is a very suggestive in- 
dication of the impression Mr. Mill's moral influence 
made on those who knew him. 

An apology is due to the readers of these pages that 



HIS INFLUENCE AS A PRACTICAL POLITICIAN. 8? 

the task of speaking of Mr. Mill as a practical politician 
has not fallen into more competent hands. No one can 
be more deeply sensible of my inability to deal ade- 
quately with the subject than I am myself. This sketch 
ought to have been written by one who is in every way 
more qualified to speak of Mr. Mill's political career 
than I am. Unavoidable circumstances, however, pre- 
vented his undertaking the work ; and as the time was 
too short to allow of any being spent in a search that 
might have proved fruitless, the honor of writing these 
lines has devolved upon me. 

Millicent Garrett Fawcett. 



XI. 

HIS RELATION TO POSITIVISM. 1 

The present course of lectures on a special subject 
has made no pretension to present the religious aspect 
of Positivism, and I shall not venture to intrude on one 
of its gravest functions the due commemoration of the 
dead. But nothing that is spoken here should have a 
merely scientific form, nor can I be satisfied until I have 
tried to give expression to the feeling which must be 
foremost in the minds of all present. It is impossible to 
forget that it was by Mr.. Mill that Comte was first made 
known in this country, and that by him first in this 
country the great doctrines of positive thought, the su- 
preme reign of law in the moral and social world, no less 
than in the intellectual world, were reduced to system 
and life. This conception as a whole has been gradu- 
ally forming in the minds of all modern thinkers ; but its 
full scope and force were presented to Englishmen for 
the first time by Mr. Mill. The growth of my own mind, 
and of that of all those with whom I have been associ- 
ated, has been simply the recognition of this truth in all 



1 Part of a lecture on " Political Institutions," delivered at the Positivist 
School, May n. 



HIS RELATION TO POSITIVISM. 89 

its bearings and force ; and it was in minds saturated 
with this principle by the teaching of Mr. Mill that the 
great phases of English thought have germinated in our 
day. In this place it is impossible to forget, that, in in- 
troducing to the English world the principles of Comte, 
Mr. Mill so clearly and ardently professed the positive 
philosophy at that time restricted to its earlier phase 
alone. In this place it is impossible, too, to forget the 
generous assistance which he extended to Comte, where- 
by he was enabled to continue his labors in philosophy, 
impossible also to forget the active communion of mind 
between them, and the large space which their inter- 
course occupied in the thoughts and labors of both. 
Nor can I, and many present here, forget the many oc- 
casions on which we have been guided by his counsel 
and supported by his help in many a practical work in 
which we have depended on his example and experience. 
It is needless to repeat, for it must be present to all 
minds, how many and deep are the differences which 
separate him from the later doctrines of Comte, and how 
completely he repudiated connection with the religious 
reconstruction of Positivism. We here, at any rate, shall 
claim Mr. Mill for Positivism in no other sense than that 
in which he claimed k for himself in his own latest writ- 
ings. These differences we shall neither exaggerate nor 
veil. They stand all written most clearly for all men to 
weigh and to use. But naturally we shall point, as one 
of us has already publicly pointed, to the cardinal fea- 
tures of agreement, and the vast importance of the 
features for which we may claim the whole weight of his 
authority. Yet I would not pretend that it is only on 
this side of his connection with the founder and princi- 
8* 



gO JOHN STUART MILL. 

pies of Positivism, that we dwell on the memory of Mr. 
Mill with admiration and sympathy. We reverence that 
unfaltering fearlessness of spirit, that warmth of gener- 
ous emotion, that guileless simplicity of nature, which 
made his life heroic. Neither insult, failure, nor aban- 
donment could shake his sense of duty, or touch his 
gentle and serene fortitude. For us his high example, 
his noble philosophic calm, continue to live and to teach. 
He, being dead, yet speaketh. And, if his great heart 
and brain are no longer amongst us as visible and con- 
scious agencies, his spirit lives yet in all that he has' 
given to the generation of to-day : the work of his spirit 
is not ended, nor the task of his life accomplished ; but 
we feel that his nature is entering on a new and greater 
life amongst us, — one that is entirely spiritual, intellec- 
tual, and moral. 

Frederic Harrison. 



XII. 

HIS POSITION AS A PHILOSOPHER. 

It is always hazardous to forecast the estimation in 
which any man will be held by posterity. In one sense 
truly we have no right to anticipate the judgment of the 
future, sufficient for us to form opinions satisfactory 
within the limits of our own generation. Sometimes, by 
evil chance, a great name is covered with undeserved re- 
proach ; and it is reserved for a distant future to do it 
justice. But such a work as Mr. Carlyle did for Crom- 
well we may confidently anticipate will never be re- 
quired for the name of John Stuart Mill. He is already 
enrolled among the first of contemporary thinkers, and 
from that list his name will never be erased. The nature 
of Mr. Mill's work is such as to make it easy to predict 
the character of his future reputation. His is the kind 
of philosophy that is destined to become the common- 
place of the future. We may anticipate that many of his 
most remarkable views will become obsolete in the best 
sense : they will become worked up into practice, and em- 
bodied in institutions. Indeed, the place that he will hold 
will probably be closely resembling that of the great 
father of English philosophy, — John Locke. There is 

91 



92 JOHN STUART MILL. 

indeed, amid distinguishing differences, a remarkable sim- 
ilarity between the two men, and the character of their 
influence on the world. What Locke was to the liberal 
movements of the sevententh century, Mr. Mill has more 
than been to the liberal movement of the nineteenth 
century. The intellectual powers of the two men had 
much in common, and they were exercised upon precisely 
similar subjects. The "Essay on the Human Under- 
standing " covered doubtless a field more purely psycho- 
logical than the " Logic ; " but we must remember that the 
" Analysis of the Mind " by the elder Mill had recently 
carried the inductive study of mind to an advanced point. 
If, however, we regard less the topics on which these two 
illustrious men wrote, than the special service rendered 
by each of them to intellectual progress, we may not un- 
fittingly compare the work of Locke — the descent from 
metaphysics to psychology — to the noble purpose of 
redeeming logic from the superstition of the Aristote- 
lians, and exalting it to something higher than a mere 
verbal exercise for school-boys. The attack that Locke 
opened with such tremendous effect on the a priori school 
of philosophy was never more ably supported than by 
the " Logic " and controversial writings of Mr. Mill. 

The remarkable fact in regard to both these great 
thinkers — these conquerors in the realms of abstract 
speculation — is their relation to politics. Locke was 
the political philosopher of the Revolution of 1688 ; 
Mr. Mill has been the political philosopher of the 
democracy of the nineteenth century. The vast space 
that lies between their treatises represents a differ- 
ence, not in the men, but in the times. Locke 
found opposed to the common weal an odious the- 



HIS POSITION AS A PHILOSOPHER. 93 

ory of arbitrary and absolute power. It is interesting 
to remember what were the giants necessary to be 
slain in those days. The titles of his first chapters on 
" Government " significantly attest the rudimentary 
condition of political philosophy in Locke's day. 
Adam was generally considered to have had a divine 
power of government, which was transmitted to a 
favored few of his descendants. Accordingly Locke 
disposes of Adam's title to sovereignty to whatever 
origin it may have been ascribed, — to "creation," 
"donation," "the subjection of Eve," or "fatherhood." 
There is something almost ludicrous in discussing fun- 
damental questions of government with reference to 
such scriptural topics ; and it is a striking evidence of 
the change that has passed over England since the 
Revolution, that, whereas Locke's argument looks like 
a commentary on the Bible, even the bishops now do 
not in Parliament quote the Bible on the question of 
marriage with a deceased wife's sister. Nevertheless 
Locke clearly propounded the great principle, which, 
in spite of many errors and much selfishness, has been 
the fruitful heritage of the Whig party. " Political 
power, then, I take to be a right of making laws with 
penalties of death, and consequently all less penalties, 
for the regulating and preserving of property, and of 
employing the force of the community in the execution 
of such laws, and in the defence of the commonwealth 
from foreign injury, and all this o?ily for the public good." 
Locke also enounced the maxim, that the state of na- 
ture is one of equality. Mr. Mill's special views on 
the land question are not without parallel in Locke ; for 
that acute thinker distinctively laid down that " labor " 



94 JOHN STUART MILL. 

.was the true ground even of property in land. Still it 
must be confessed that Locke's political philosophy is 
much cruder than Mr. Mill's. His " Essay. on Govern- 
ment " is as the rough work of a boy of genius, the 
" Representative Government " a finished work of art 
of the experienced master. And this difference corre- 
sponds with the rate of political progress. The Eng- 
lish constitution, as we now understand it, was un- 
known at the Revolution : it had to be slowly created. 
Now the great task of the future is to raise the mass of 
the people to a higher standard of political intelligence 
and material comfort. To that great end no man has 
contributed so much as Mr. Mill. 

Perhaps the one writing for which above all others 
Mr. Mill's disciples will love his memory is his es- 
say " On Liberty." In this undertaking Mr. Mill fol- 
lowed the noble precedent of Locke, with greater 
largeness of view and perfection of work. Locke's 
four letters " Concerning Toleration " constitute a 
splendid manifesto of the Liberals of the seventeenth 
century. The principle, that the ends of political society 
are life, health, liberty, and immunity from harm, and 
not the salvation of souls, has taken nearly two centu- 
ries to root itself in English law, but has long been 
recognized by all but the shallowest bigots. And yet 
Locke spoke of " atheism being a crime, which, for its 
madness as well as guilt, ought to shut a man out of 
all sober and civil society." Here again, what a stride 
does the Libei'ty make ? It is, once more, the differ- 
ence of the times, rather than of the men. The same 
noble and prescient insight into the springs of national 
greatness and social progress characterizes the work 



HIS POSITION AS A PHILOSOPHER. 95 

of both men, but in what different measures ? Again, 
we must say, the disciple is greater than the master. 
Closely bearing on this topic is the relation of the two 
men to Christianity. Locke not only wrote to show 
the " Reasonableness of Christianity," but paraphrased 
several of the books of the New Testament. Mr. Mill 
has never written one sentence to give the least en- 
couragement to Christianity. But, although a contrast 
appears to exist, there is really none. Locke was 
what may be called a Bible Christian. He rejected all 
theological systems, and constructed his religious be- 
lief in the truly Protestant way, — with the Bible and his 
inner consciousness. His creed was the Bible as con- 
formed to reason ; but he never doubted which, in the 
event of a conflict, ought to give way. To him the de- 
structive criticism of biblical scholars and the discov- 
eries of geology had given no disquietude ; and he 
died with the happy conviction, that, without aban- 
doning his religious teaching, he could remain faith- 
ful to reason. Mr. Mill inherited a vast controversy ; 
and he had to make a choice : like Locke, he re- 
mained faithful only to reason. 

Perhaps, it might be urged, this comparison leaves 
out of account the very greatest work of Mr. Mill, — 
his "Political Economy." Locke lived too soon to 
be an Adam Smith ; but, curiously enough, the paral- 
lel is not broken even at this point. In 1691 and 
again in 1695 he wrote, " Some considerations of 
the consequences of the lowering of interest, and 
raising the value of money," in which he propounded 
among other views, that, " taxes, however contrived, 
and out of whose hands soever immediately taken, do, 



96 JOHN STUART MILL. 

in a country where the great fund is in land, for the 
most part terminate upon land." There is of course 
no comparison between the two men on this head: 
nevertheless it is interesting to note in prototype the 
germs of the great work of Mr. Mill. It shows the 
remarkable and by no means accidental similarity 
between the men. 

The parallel is already too much drawn out ; oth- 
erwise it would be worth observing on the charac- 
ters and lives of these two men. Enough, however, 
has been said to show that we may not unreasona- 
bly anticipate for Mr. Mill a future such as has fallen 
to Locke. His wisdom will be the commonplace of 
other times: his theories will be realized in politi- 
ical institutions ; and we may hope and believe the 
working-class will rise to such a standard of wealth 
and culture and political power as to realize the 
generous aspirations of one of England's greatest 
sons. 

W. A. Hunter. 









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